


The Peregrines

by CyanideBreathmint



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Evil Corporations, F/M, M/M, Multi, Psionics, also lots of smut, but we all knew that already, content warning: alcohol use, content warning: allusions to non-specific abuse of minors, content warning: cyberdysphoria, content warning: discussion of emasculation in the context of injury and non-consensual cyberization, content warning: discussion of self-harm, content warning: discussion of suicide, content warning: discussions of human experimentation, content warning: emotionally abusive behavior, content warning: non-consensual surgery, content warning: psychological alienation from one's body, content warning: really graphic descriptions of injuries and gore, content warning: snoke is a horrible person, content warning: subtle and unsubtle dehumanization of people, content warning: unsafe sex, content warning: very graphic character POV gore and mutilation, content warning: virtual slavery of sapient entities who are treated as playthings and equipment, dysfunctional people having dysfunctional sex with each other, dystopic cyberpunk au, ever watched akira? that's the inside of ren's head, hux is more than half machine at this point, phasma's a 3-d printed synthetic human, plant pollination is an interspecies three-way, self pollination is just vegetable onanism, the major character death is not permanent, three way stockholm syndrome pileup, way too much thought given to how a cyborg with barbie doll anatomy goes to the bathroom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2018-12-03 06:20:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11526336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanideBreathmint/pseuds/CyanideBreathmint
Summary: Former ronin mercenary Armitage Hux works for the CEO of F.O.E, Snoke, and has been for the past five years. His responsibilities are to protect, care for and attend to the needs of powerful, unstable psion Kylo Ren. Hux is a man over a barrel. His corporate masters own him wholly, and he is pulled constantly between his affection for Ren and the demands of his direct superior. He seeks and finds comfort and solace with his best and only friend, Snoke's head of security Natalia Phasma, but what does he do when he encounters incontrovertible proof that Snoke is planning something truly horrific with Kylo Ren in mind?---content warning: discussions of human experimentationcontent warning: really graphic discussions of injuries and gorecontent warning: psychological alienation from one's own bodycontent warning: cyberdysphoriacontent warning: alcohol usecontent warning: non-consensual surgerycontent warning: discussion of emasculation in the context of injury and non-consensual cyberization





	1. Homecoming

A freezing rain splattered slushily against the windows of the VTOL as it flew itself closer to the western end of the Chicago-Detroit Metropolitan Axis, just another harbinger of the oncoming snow. Armitage Hux gazed out through the armored glass panel to idly scan the landscape below. The software agent in his augmented vision traced the topography below him with helpful translucent lines, diagramming the streets and buildings in a real-time map that shifted easily with the VTOL’s position. He were now safely on the outskirts of the Chicago arcology complex, in corporate-owned territory, which meant that he would be landing in less than 20 minutes. 

He was the only official passenger listed aboard the manifest of this private flight - the two other people who accompanied him were more correctly designated as equipment and cargo, respectively. The cargo rested in a matte gray cryopod plastered with plasfax labels. WARNING, one of them said helpfully, MEDICAL SPECIMEN. PLEASE HANDLE WITH CARE. The pod itself hummed quietly away, the sound of its internal coolant pump and life support systems at work. On its own its power pack would be good for 48 hours. Plugged into the VTOL’s electrical systems as it was, the pod would run until the VTOL either ran out of fuel or was destroyed. 

That left the equipment, who lay drowsing in the seat to Hux’s right. The seat back had been pushed down as far as it would go, the footrest up, and Hux had left the cabin lights dimmed so that Kylo Ren could rest. Ren did not strictly sleep, could not unless he was either psi-shielded or floating in his iso-tank. He was simply so powerful and sensitive a psion that he could not help hearing the thoughts of others, which thus ran like a constant maelstrom of white noise in his head. As Ren’s handler, Hux spent a lot of time around him and had therefore been implanted with proprietary neural shielding that blocked most of Ren’s gifts for several practical reasons, security and their mutual comfort among them. Ren lay very still in the cabin’s low light, his face and hands showing startlingly pale over the trench coat that had been draped over him like a blanket. Ren’s full lips were slightly parted, the dark shadows smudged under his long eyelids a permanent part of him at this point.

Hux ran a gloved hand over Ren’s forehead to brush strands of dark wavy hair out of his eyelashes, found his skin cool and clammy to the touch. _The sedatives, no doubt,_ Hux thought. Ren opened his heavily-lidded eyes at the touch, glanced briefly up at Hux as he peeled Ren’s trench coat off him, folded it into his own lap. “We’re going to be landing in fifteen minutes,” Hux told him. “You’ll want to put your limiter helmet back on soon.” They were currently still at high enough an altitude that other minds were too distant for Ren to perceive well, but that would all change once the VTOL began to approach the landing pad.

“Yeah.” Ren reached out for the armrest, fumbled at the controls which would return his seat to an upright position, yawned. The dermal patch on the inside of his wrist had gone from purple to white, which meant that it had run out of medication and was about to fall off in the next minute. Hux picked the matte black helmet off the floor before his footrest and handed it to Ren, who put it on with a soft whirr-hiss of sealing mechanisms. 

A small advisory popped up in the periphery of Hux’s vision, just to the left. HELMET SEALS ENGAGED, it said, PSI-SHIELDING ONLINE. Good. This would insulate Ren’s mind from the millions of people living in the arcology long enough for him to reach the iso-tank in his quarters. This mission had been a rough one for the both of them, and at this point Hux wanted nothing more than to return to his quarters, lie down and close his eyes until woken by his alarm at some later time. He would have to attend to Ren’s needs first, though. 

Ren had spent the past three days as a psionic sniffer hound tracking down a fugitive in a major conurbation; Hux had been forced to dose him with increasing doses of psi-amplifiers in that last bitter stretch before they had run their quarry to ground. This had tasked Ren to the very limits of his considerable abilities and faltering sanity and he would need at least 24 hours’ rest, recovery and decompression in his iso-tank before he would be fit to interact with anyone at all, let alone attend a debriefing.

Hux glanced again to the cryo-pod as the VTOL’s landing lights began to come on, gave Ren a brief touch on the shoulder. The touch was part of a nonverbal shorthand they had developed through the five years Hux had been Ren’s handler. Ren could hear and speak perfectly well through this limiter helmet, albeit with his voice slightly distorted, but previous iterations of the hardware had been rather less accessible, and it always calmed him to feel Hux’s physical presence. He reached up with his own hand, squeezed gently on Hux’s fingers, and then let go as the VTOL began to shed altitude and descend towards one of the rooftop landing pads. 

Hux’s enhanced vision picked out a flicker of reflection just beyond the landing pad, a bright glint of white and silver, and the sight brought a brief smile to his coldly handsome face. _Phasma._ Snoke’s head of security was here to make sure that he, his equipment and his cargo had arrived safely in Chicago. 

Hux banished the map in his vision, stared dully out the window to glance at his own reflection in the glass. The bad lighting robbed him of color and animation, reduced his red hair to a ghostly gray. The only color he could pick out in his face was the bright acid green of his eyes, which hung pupiless in his gaze. His cybereyes were not a subtle job, not really, from the retractable lens sockets bracketing the outsides of his orbits to the tiny gold letters ringing those irises. The letters read F.O.E PRECISION OPTICS : PEREGRINUS for anyone who cared to stare deeply into Hux’s eyes; corporation, brand and model all part of the advertising package, which he supposed he was in a way.

At least his didn’t light up like some of the trendier sets did. Not only was the glow impractical, it got in the way of visual acuity in partial darkness, and painted one as a great big target in any kind of tactical situation. From there it was effortless to aim between the glowing points, like lining up a night sight, to fire a shot that would land right between the eyes. As for subtlety, he had left that far behind with his first pair of replacement eyes nearly twenty years ago, ridiculous blue ones with faux mechanical irises as though those did anything the hardware didn’t. At least his tastes had matured with time.

Thrusters fired, their scream muffled by the fuselage of the VTOL as its automated piloting systems placed it smoothly and easily down upon the landing pad. The interior lights brightened then, and Ren unbuckled his seatbelt and stood unsteadily up. Hux stood to help Ren with the sleeves of his matte black trenchcoat, unrolled the hood tucked into the zippered collar and pulled it over the dome of his helmet. The fabric of Ren’s coat was dense, dark, and it seemed to swallow the light that touched it, leaving Ren looking like a silhouette, a living, two-dimensional shadow in a three-dimensional world. Hux then put on his own raincoat and retrieved a small paper shopping bag from a storage compartment. 

Hydraulics hissed sharply as the VTOL ramp unfolded automatically to let them out, its door folding up into the cloudy air. The nanofog was thick today with all the precipitation, the CDMA’s weather control system working overtime to purify the acid-polluted water falling from the sky before it could taint the arcology’s catchment systems and eat away at the architecture. Hux’s implanted lenses slid out of their skull-mounted housing to seal off his eyes as he stepped out into the late autumn chill, Ren a step behind him. 

“Hux, Ren,” Phasma said, respectfully. She was wearing her favorite raincoat again, the matte poly one that revealed its quicksilver lining through its transparent outer fabric. Right now the lining reflected nothing but the gray of nano, the landing lights diffusing weakly through the cloud, and its muted color seemed to brighten the blue of her eyes, the red lipstick she wore as her only makeup. Her short blonde hair was wet, plastered close to her scalp - it looked as though she had been standing here for a few minutes in the rain, waiting for them to arrive. Behind her was a small wall of flesh and metal and uniform, two tough, bulked up security staff members serving as her unofficial escort, their faces unreadable behind the eye-obscuring lenses of their visual implants.

“Phasma,” Hux replied, glanced up to Ren, who was clearly too tired to speak. “I apologize,” Hux told her, “Ren’s had a difficult flight back. It was a long three days.” 

“Of course,” she said, her expression unchanging, neither put off nor offended as she nodded towards the cryopod on the VTOL’s floor. “I take it that’s the shipment you brought in from Florence.” 

“It is.” Hux said. Phasma’s escort was more of a display than actual protection - not very much would have prevented him from killing them or her effortlessly had he so wished. He understood his own situation well, however, and did not. There was so much proprietary technology in his skull that his cranium had also been rigged to explode on his death to prevent competition from knocking him off and stealing those secrets from his corpse. Hux did not doubt at all that Snoke could have the explosives detonated before his death if he ever did anything foolish.

Phasma turned, headed easily towards the automated door leading into the arcology complex. She kept her leggy stride shortened somewhat, slowing her pace so that Hux and Ren could follow without difficulty, which they did. “I’ll have some porters move that down to the labs, and have your luggage sent to your rooms,” she said, murmuring to her security escort as they stepped into an elevator together. The doors shut, but neither of the heavies followed. 

“It doesn’t take the Head of Security to do all this, you know,” Hux said, oddly grateful for her presence. “You could just send a manager.” This was an off-hours thing for her; she wasn’t even wearing her work-issue ARglasses. Ren was leaning heavily against him now, and Hux supported him effortlessly - an odd sight when he was 2 inches shorter and much slimmer than Ren, but he possessed a wiry strength and sturdiness all out of proportion to his minimal dancer’s figure. 

Phasma said something, but Hux did not hear her - his attention was taken up by Ren, who was visibly flagging and on the verge of collapse as the elevator began to ascend the floors to the tower penthouse where Hux and Ren were quartered. Hux did not personally require such luxury, but its distance from the main hab-blocks made it easier to shield and insulate for Ren’s mental comfort. 

“Will you require a hand?” Phasma asked Hux again, and he nodded, once. It would be easier for Ren to stumble the short distance if there were someone supporting him on either side. She stepped around Ren and took his left arm across her shoulders, and together they helped him from the lobby to his designated quarters. Ren’s bedroom was a spare, austere place, its floorspace taken mostly up by a single medical bed and a blackened glass cubicle that glittered cold and hard under the ceiling lights. Phasma took Ren’s limiter helmet as he removed it, his dark hair curling and waving down to his shoulders, and then he leaned heavily against her as Hux helped him undress, stripping him of his clothing, jacket and t-shirt and trousers, until he was naked as a babe. 

Ren sighed wearily in the utter privacy of his room, accompanied only by two people whose minds were closed off to his gifts, and he shivered in the cool air as Hux guided him towards the iso-tank. Seals hissed as its lid popped open, its sides becoming transparent as Ren stepped in and sat down. He lay shivering as Hux knelt to hook him up to various biomonitors, and then fit and adjusted the breather mask over his face. 

“You did well,” Hux told him as he worked, kissed him gently on the bridge of his patrician nose, just over the soft silicone edge of the breather mask. “Now rest. Sleep. I’ll come get you later.”

Ren nodded once, his dark eyes very bright as he pressed his index and middle fingers to his mask in an abbreviated kiss, and then pressed those fingers to the glass. More shorthand. _I love you,_ the gesture said. The seals on the closing lid hissed again as the cubicle began to fill with a pre-warmed, proprietary psionically inert liquid, and Ren closed his eyes as though sinking into a hot, soothing bath. The sides of the cubicle darkened again save for a single panel, which displayed readouts of Ren’s vital signs and brain activity. 

Hux didn’t have to look at it at this point. He’d had Ren’s telemetry sent to his augmented vision after his first days as his handler, so he could tell if things were going right whether he was there or not. Hux never got anything done otherwise, constantly distracted by anxious, intrusive thoughts of Kylo Ren drowning in case the life support failed, or something similar. It wasn’t that he was overly concerned about Ren’s health, Hux told himself. Just that his own continued well-being and future employment depended rather heavily on Ren remaining stable, healthy and functional under his care and management. Psions of Ren’s caliber were rare enough that even Hux’s slow and painful death by disassembly would be insufficient recompense if Ren were damaged on his watch. It was also a lot easier to sleep if he knew that he could summon Ren’s vitals readout with a thought, see the numbers ticking in the darkness behind his eyelids as he lay in bed. 

“Thank you, Phasma,” Hux said belatedly as he turned away from the iso-tank. Its systems were running and Ren’s vital signs were all within normal range. It would be best for Hux to just leave Ren to sleep in the soundproofed tank for the time being, and take care of his own needs while he waited.

“Will you come and have dinner with me?” Phasma asked him, “I know it’s late, but I thought maybe you haven’t eaten yet.” She put Ren’s limiter helmet down on a wall-mounted stand, straightened it when it hung crooked after, and watched as Hux picked his paper bag back off the floor of Ren’s bedroom.

“No, I haven’t quite.” Hux’s last meal had been an energy bar and a mediocre cup of coffee sweetened as much as he could stand, consumed mindlessly on the flight back three hours ago. It had been in no way sufficient to satisfy his hunger, not especially when so many of his augmentations ran on his body’s reserves of glycogen. Increased appetite and a marked sweet tooth were common side effects of being so extensively enhanced. He followed Phasma out of Ren’s bedroom into the living room they shared, its hardwood floor spotlessly clean thanks to the efforts of a small cleaning drone. 

The lights had come on automatically as they had entered the penthouse, and they dimmed as he and Phasma exited into the elevator lobby. “You’ll be glad to hear,” she told him, “that Snoke doesn’t expect your debriefing until tomorrow afternoon, after 3PM.” 

Hux frowned minutely then. “I can definitely file my after action report by three tomorrow, I’d been working on the first draft while we flew back. But Ren won’t be fit for debriefing, not until he’s had at least 24 hours of rest.” 

“Oh, no, he doesn’t expect Ren to show up tomorrow. He’s concerned mostly with your take on things,” Phasma said as the elevator continued to descend. Phasma had refused a penthouse when she had been instated as Snoke’s head of security three years ago, citing the distance from her offices as an inconvenience. Instead she lived in the top floors of a hab block, in one of the large apartments reserved for middle-echelon corporate staff with families. 

Hux knew that Phasma privately disliked windows, having spent most of her life aboard an orbital station until she had taken up her position here, and considered a scenic view as superfluous given the existence of e-ink wallpaper. Windows were structural weaknesses in vacuum, all waiting for just the right piece of orbiting trash to impact them and cause significant havoc. 

“I’m not in any kind of trouble, am I?” Hux asked Phasma. He was not concerned about eavesdropping at all, simply because corporate employees and citizens were all constantly under surveillance. This omnipresent observation granted them a surprising amount of privacy, if only because there was only so much of it a given human operator could watch. 

Expert system software agents weren’t smart enough to understand context, and tended to generate ridiculous amounts of false positives if programmed to flag behaviors or actions. True sousveillance tended to involve actual artificial intelligences, which were tightly regulated and ridiculously expensive to boot, and far better employed for other, more cost-effective purposes. Besides, what was Snoke going to think if he were currently viewing their conversation? It was a perfectly rational thing for Hux to want to stay in his employer’s good graces. 

“You’re not,” Phasma said simply, and Hux trusted her to answer truly. The door to her apartment hissed open to admit them, and Hux stepped inside just after she did. 

“By the way, this is for you,” he told her, handing her the paper bag he had brought all the way from Florence. Tissue paper rustled softly as she looked into the bag, and then fished a stasis jar out of its depths. Rounded grains of uncooked rice shifted behind its glass and steel walls as she tilted the jar in her hand, scanned the label.

 _“Tartufi bianchi,”_ Phasma read aloud, grinned with a surprising joy. The expression transformed her fair face, made her look girlish, almost. “Which prince did you have to abduct and ransom for forest-grown white truffles? Should I worry about your moonlighting?” 

“None, actually,” Hux shrugged his raincoat off and hung it up on a wall hook. “There was a truffle festival while we were there, and I acquired this just before we left.” He began to unfasten his boots, slipped them off so he could let his feet sink into the plush thickness of the light gray carpet.

“You’ve saved at least one for yourself, I hope,” Phasma said. She crossed easily to her fully featured open-concept kitchen and put the truffle jar down on the granite-topped bar, rummaged again in the bag to pull out more of its contents. A wedge of genuine Parmigiano Reggiano enveloped in shrinkwrap, a jar of rich green cold-pressed olive oil.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Hux shrugged, “And neither would Ren. We’re both content to get our meals out of the microwave, and you’re the only cook I know well enough to give truffles to.” He pulled one of the bar stools up to the bar, sat opposite her with his back to the living room.

“I hope you don’t expect me to cook something with this right now,” Phasma said. She took off her own silver-lined raincoat to reveal the conservative suit she wore while on duty, took the discreetly armored velvet jacket off too. The coat she hung up beside Hux’s, the jacket she left draped over the back of the sofa. Well-worn leather holsters shone against the white of her shirt - a sidearm tucked behind her right hip, inside the waistband with magazine carriers on the other side, a shoulder rig that held a knife just under her right arm, and a less-lethal flechette gun under her left. 

“No, not tonight,” Hux smiled tiredly, “This was partly Ren’s idea, so we’ll have to invite him along when you do. He knows you’ve been on an Italian streak lately.” He could feel himself sagging a little against the bar counter, the points of his elbows pressing against the granite slab.

“To be honest, I did not expect that,” Phasma said as she turned her back to Hux and opened her pantry door, started retrieving various items. A box of spaghetti noodles, anchovies in oil, tinned tomato puree, a bottle of California zinfandel. A sealed jar of capers in brine, salted olives, some red pepper flakes and a bulb of garlic.

Hux watched her set up her mise en place, nodded in acknowledgement as she paused to roll up her sleeves, uncork the bottle of wine and pour him a glass. “He respects you, and I know he also likes you on a personal level.” 

“As do you,” Phasma said. She poured herself a glass as well but did not pick it up, left the wine bottle uncorked on the bar counter so it could breathe. 

“As do I.” Hux cupped the wineglass carefully in his gloved hand, swirled it about before taking an experimental sip. The red was dry, and chewy with its acid tannic bite, leaving a spicy tingle on the tongue. It was hot almost, intensely alcoholic for a wine, and Hux glanced briefly at the label, noting its alcohol content of 15%. It would go very well with the umami bite of anchovies and capers, the sour-sweet richness of tomatoes. 

That done, Phasma turned to the refrigerator and pulled out a small package wrapped in butcher paper, unfolded the paper to reveal two fresh, glistening filets of salmon. She oiled a baking dish, and then rubbed the salmon with salt and pepper, laid it down in preparation to broil it in the oven. Hux was content to simply watch her at this point, her hands careful and deft as she smashed cloves of garlic under the flat of her chef’s knife, minced it finely on her chopping board. 

Hux found it nostalgic, remembering his mother in her chef’s jacket, the pristine white towel she tucked through an apron-string so it would always be there when she needed it. He wouldn’t have put it past Phasma to use cooking to put him at ease after having read about his background in his employee dossier, but it was a small thing that he didn’t mind. It was subtly done if that were the case, which was more than he had grown to expect from Snoke’s security and medical apparatus.

Hux summoned Ren’s vital sign data while he waited, sipping at his wine as he did, and then banished the readout from his superimposed HUD after seeing that all was normal. Ren had just entered the second stage of NREM sleep, his breathing slow and steady. He was stressed still from his previous mission - Hux noted elevated cortisol levels, and knew that it would take more than a night’s sleep to bring that somewhere closer to typical. 

Hux lifted his wineglass for another sip to realize that it was empty, that he had drained it half a minute ago. He frowned absently to himself, and then refilled his glass from the bottle, and left both on the bar top instead. There was a warm smell of tomatoes and anchovies, salt and spice and tangy sweetness contrasting with the oily savor of salmon sizzling in the oven. 

Phasma wiped her pale hands on her apron and turned from the stove to him as though she had sensed his hesitation. “Drink more, if you want. There’s another bottle where that came from.” 

He smiled gently at her. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” he asked her lightly, facetiously.

“Please,” Phasma grinned at him as she picked up her wineglass. “I know every single modification that has been made to your body, Hux and I know that you’re not capable of getting drunk, not even on industrial alcohol.” 

“I’ve always thought it a pity, myself,” Hux murmured, remembering the flush of heat in his veins, the pleasant buzz after a dram or two. “There are times when I would like to be drunk.” It wasn’t as bad as things could be, he told himself - he could still enjoy the violets and pepper of a good Scotch, the body-heat behind his heart as it zinged down his gullet. 

“Don’t we all?” Phasma sighed, “Although I suppose I don’t really miss it, never having been able to get drunk in the first place.” She took a slow appreciative sip of her wine, rolled the liquid over the surface of her tongue to let the flavor develop on her palate. “Mm,” she sighed, after she had swallowed that mouthful. “Yummy.” 

Dinner passed in relative silence, Hux being too hungry to slow down for conversation. He held his fork and knife delicately in his gloved hands and flaked his salmon fillet into his plate of spaghetti, then ate the fish and noodles rolled into neat bundles around his fork, wiping his lips with his napkin every two or three bites. 

Phasma watched him demolish the contents of his plate as she finished her own supper, first the noodles, mopped extra sauce from the plate with fragments of salmon that she broke off with her fork. She was slow and methodical, eating everything in its own prescribed order. They had done this enough times that Hux knew exactly why she was watching him - she liked watching him enjoy himself, and he enjoyed himself a great deal when he allowed her to feed him. 

Hux felt some of the tension bleeding out of him as he began to slow down, the edge of his hunger blunting enough to allow him to enjoy the flavors in his meal. It had always felt odd how he could feel aches in muscles that he no longer possessed. He had asked a cybertechnician about that during one of his maintenance checkups, and she had told him that it involved his sense of proprioception and his neural map - his prosthetics functioned quite like the original limbs, so his body continued to expect them to work like flesh and blood, up to and including the cramp and ache of tension, or the tingling that sometimes came with long periods of inactivity. 

“Shall we adjourn?” Phasma asked after they had finished their dinner, drained the last sip in her wineglass. Her pink tongue chased the last dark drop lingering on her lower lip. 

“I would like to, but not all night,” Hux murmured after a brief glance at Ren’s vital signs in his augmented vision, “I want to be there when Ren wakes up. If that is fine with you, of course.” He stood up at the table before she could answer, scraping his chair backwards, and let his coat slip off his narrow shoulders. That he draped on the chair back, and then he was peeling off his thin sheepskin gloves to reveal the precision-machined joints of his wrists and knuckles, his thumbs. Phasma’s eyes seemed to darken with arousal and interest as she watched him perform his slow striptease.

Hux’s replacement hands were just as sensitive as his flesh and bone ones, and the buttons of his waistcoat gave him no trouble at all. He draped that too over the chair and tugged his silk necktie free, before he bowed briefly and offered Phasma his right hand. She took it, flesh dimpling softly against the metal, and levered herself upright to kick off her shoes. He played idly with the buttons on her blouse, working them open as she slipped a long arm around his neck, let the other linger in the middle of his back. 

Hux kissed her on the cheek, nibbled gently at her right earlobe and the side of her neck as he slipped a hand into the open placket of her blouse to caress her, palmed her left breast with his right hand through the filmy cup of her bra. This was a dance they had done many times before, slow and instinctive and familiar no matter how it changed. Phasma let go of him then, grabbed him by the left wrist, dragged him towards her bedroom. Hux followed in her wake, content to be led by the hand like a child. 

Hux unbuckled his belt as he watched her slip off her shoulder holster and shrug her blouse to the floor. He let his trousers slide off his hips as she unbuckled her belt and began to step out of hers. His shirt came last as she stripped completely, whispering softly onto the thick carpet beneath his feet, and when that was done they stood naked and equal before each other. Under his clothing Hux was a patchwork creature sewn and stitched with wire and suture alike. Pale, freckled skin segued into old, well-healed scars that butted up against machined metal connectors, graphene sheets and carbon fiber laid over layers of wire and myomer, artificial tendons and sinew. 

Dark shadows showed translucently under his fair skin where his remaining bones and tendons had been reinforced to support custom combat-grade prostheses. More pale scars marred the former smoothness of his belly, old injuries, and newer scars where his clavicles and scapulae had been, all replaced when the cybertechnicians had mounted his new arms onto his torso. 

He watched Phasma’s breath quicken minutely as he slipped into bed beside her, let her run her warm hands over the sleek metal and polymer of his hips and legs, over the doll-like smoothness between his thighs. Then she scratched the skin of his lower back ever so lightly with the tips of her fingernails, caressing her way up his reinforced spine, and Hux shivered against her in delight, his lips pressed to the side of her neck. He let her roll him over, went easily with the movement and smiled softly, sadly up at her. 

“Don’t be afraid,” Phasma whispered as she began to straighten up again, shifting her position so that he could feel the soft skin of her inner thighs against his flanks, the delicate folds of her vulva against the vulnerable flesh of his lower belly. Hux appreciated that gesture; his remaining skin had grown very sensitive since he had been repaired by Snoke’s cybertechnicians, as his brain had remapped his sense of touch to compensate for his extensive prosthetics and modifications. “You’ve never hurt me before,” she continued, “and I would tell you if you had.” 

“I sometimes wonder,” Hux murmured up at her as he caressed her gently with his cold hands, leaving a small trail of goosebumps along the outside of her thighs, the soft curves of her arse, her narrow waist, “why you want me when there are so many other men out in the world.” 

“You mean men with dicks.” Phasma smiled wryly down at him, planted a fond kiss on his forehead as she shifted to give him better access to her cunt, “who also happen to be limited by the tyranny of vascular hydraulics. Six inches isn’t everything, you know.” Hux kept his hands where they were for the moment, letting metal and carbon fiber, silicone and graphene warm against her skin. She was radiant, alive, her body heat leeching into him wherever they touched. 

“Don’t you miss it, though?” Hux asked, as he ran his warmed right hand up between her legs to tease the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, provoking a brief shudder as he did. “I know I do.” He let her grind down on the heel of his palm, locked his wrist in place to give her a better sense of resistance as she pressed herself hard against him. There were some small advantages to his current state. 

“You more than make up for it with your cunning mouth and clever fingers,” Phasma panted as she began to rock herself eagerly on his hand, “and I’m not worried that you don’t enjoy this too, because it’s quite clear that you do, especially when I do this.” To demonstrate Phasma grazed one of his nipples with a thumb, rolled it lightly under her fingertips. Hux shuddered and arched up into her touch, his sternum rising and falling with each hungry breath. 

Phasma was wet now, hot and slick against his palm, and her labia parted easily under his questing fingers. Her knees tightened against his sides as he slipped a fingertip experimentally into the sodden silk of her, found her clitoris with the silicone pad of his thumb. He began to tease her gently, rubbing his thumb over her in slow, loose circles as she ground herself down on him. 

Phasma shifted on top of him, rocking herself backwards to throw her head back and shudder as Hux slipped a third finger into her, curled them to tease at the sensitive spot just inside her cunt. She reached down to grasp at his wrist, to guide the movements of his hand to better please her, and he watched the way her small, perfect breasts heaved with her ribcage as her breath grew heavy and rapid, propped himself up on an elbow to suck and nibble at the softly creased skin beneath them. 

Hux could feel her tensing more with each smooth thrust of his fingers, the tension building in her thighs and back, the firm muscles of her arse, creeping up her spine as she grew closer to climax. He closed his eyes and buried his face in her shallow cleavage, inhaling the scent of sweat and soft musk, the salty-sweetness of her being mingling with the ghostly floral notes of the perfume she had put on hours and hours ago. 

His thumb was rubbing over her clitoris in fast tight circles now, and she was so tense around him, so eager that it was no surprise when she came, keening with it as her cunt clenched around his fingers again and again. He stopped teasing her with his thumb then, knowing how sensitive she was after orgasm, kept his hand still so she could keep grinding down on his fingers if she wanted to, which she did. It didn’t take her long to come a second time after that. She rocked her hips down against the heel of his palm again, her spine taut and arched as he curled his fingers inside her yet again. 

Hux let Phasma catch her breath, let his fingers slide out from inside her as he kissed her lightly on the sternum, the softness where the bone ended beneath the skin, the spot where you drove a blade angled upwards to stab someone through the heart. She pushed him back down onto the mattress with her strong hands, shifted easily to press her muscled belly and her soft breasts against his skin. 

“It’s your turn now,” Phasma panted against his ear, “Let me.” Her wet tongue lapped against his fingers as she bent her head to kiss her way up his wrist, up the steel and carbon fiber of his forearm to the thick scars at the juncture where metal met flesh. Hux closed his eyes and let her tease his skin with her mouth and her short fingernails, groaned when she began to bite gently at one of his nipples. Losing his genitals (and most of the rest of his body, six years ago) had decoupled sex from orgasm for him. There was no frustration, no ache, only pleasure building hotly upon pleasure as she caressed him, bit lightly at him, nibbled at his skin. This could go on for hours if they both wanted it to - and had on past occasions. 

Hux’s ears were ringing in his skull, his nerve endings all tingling when he pushed Phasma gently off himself and rolled her over onto her back, gazed into the deep blue of her eyes. Her crimson lipstick was smudged, she having left traces of it all over his neck and the shelf of his shoulder, his chest, on the scars on his belly. “Have you not had enough?” she asked him, gently mocking as he bent his head to kiss her on the forehead. 

“No, have you?” Hux whispered, and Phasma laughed softly when he kissed her low on the belly, just above the cornsilk curl of her well-trimmed pubic hair, acquiesced when he propped her legs up on his shoulders and kissed her vulva lightly, flicked his tongue out to taste her. She reached down and ran her fingers through his hair as he began to eat her out, teased the top of his head with her short fingernails as he lapped soft and sloppy against her clit. Hux felt Phasma tense her legs up against his back as she began to buck up against his mouth, finding her own rhythm of pleasure and need as he slipped his fingers into the heat and wetness of her cunt again. 

Hux had always liked pleasuring his partners orally even before his extensive cyberization. He liked being able to reduce a person to an incoherent, squirming mess, found the taste of them as important as they way they kissed or touched or fucked. How else was he going to know them? Phasma was slick and salty-sweet against his tongue, the soft folds of her labia delicate against his face as he devoured her alive. The tasting of her, of his partners had become more important to him now that he was so mechanical, so many spare parts cobbled together into a killing machine. 

Snoke’s cybertechnicians had not bothered restoring Hux to anatomical correctness when they had rebuilt his body, shrugged when he had asked about it in those early days. It was possible, but not a priority, and had never been. What they always concentrated on were things that made him more efficient, a better killer, revisions and retooling of his prototype body. It would have been a trivial matter, he knew, to restore that part of his life during one of their extensive overhauls, but he knew exactly why they didn’t. 

Hux was Snoke’s man now, owned entirely by the corporation, and this was a reminder. He had taken this job to pay off the repairs they had performed upon him without his consent, and he would never pay it off, not with the accruing costs of repair, the maintenance rates, those expensive exotic drugs that prevented glial tissue buildup and rejection syndrome. Hux would never freelance again if Snoke could help it. Corporate work, corporate housing, corporate funeral.

Phasma’s fingers had closed tight on his short hair as he had continued his ministrations, the muscles of her back taut like cello strings as her calves had tensed up against the back of his neck. He slowed himself as he sensed her desperation, played her slowly out as he savored the taste and smell and touch of her in the only way he could. She was so tight around his fingers, so eager for any sensation at all, anything she could use to push herself off the edge. He pulled his fingers almost all the way out of her, smiled at her groan of frustration, left her hanging in exquisite need. She was pulling at his hair so hard now, the sensation a sweet ecstatic pain shivering down the back of his neck. Hux paused to enjoy the hurt, let it remind him he was still alive despite being more than half machine. _I’m still human, and I still have human needs,_ he thought, _I find relief where I can, they can’t take that away from me._

Hux then took a deep breath, exhaled to let the warmth of his breath tickle Phasma’s inner thighs before he pressed his lips up against her vulva again. He shoved his fingers back into her cunt with a little more roughness than was strictly necessary, felt her go very still before he started to lick her fast and hard, the tip of his tongue flicking up and down against her clitoris in the tight circles she always preferred. 

Phasma shivered, thrashed against Hux with a cry as she came again and again, and he was merciless this time, pursing his lips to suck hard at her clit, finger-fucking her good and strong against the wetness and contractions of her orgasms. She whimpered beneath him, helpless as he took her to pieces and brought her off until she was too tired and fucked out to buck and scream in response. She shuddered weakly against his mouth the last time, pushed his head gently away, and he stopped immediately, crawled next to her in bed, and held her in his cold arms while she came down from the endorphins. 

“Thank you,” Hux whispered into Phasma’s soft tangled blonde hair as she trembled against him, caught her breath again, “I really needed that.” That he had. This time with her reminded him of his humanity, grounded him, banished the bad memories strobing constantly in the back of his head.

“I know,” she breathed a minute later. He could feel her pulse slowing, her muscles relaxing as she sank into the afterglow. It was good to hold her warm and idle like this and run his fingers slowly through her hair as she began to drowse. Then he pulled himself away from her and swung his legs out of bed, began to dress. Phasma did not complain or ask him to stay. She only rolled over onto the spot where he had been previously, curled herself languidly up as she buried her face in the pillow where his head had lain. 

“Your cologne,” she said a little sheepishly as he caught her inhaling deeply, “it always smells so good.” 

In response Hux picked up the disordered sheets and comforter and draped them over her, tucking her gently into bed. “I’m sure you’ll sleep well, after this,” he murmured into her ear as she let herself sink heavily into the mattress. “Goodnight.” With that he turned off the bedroom light and stepped out to retrieve the rest of his clothing, putting each article back on as he retraced his steps back to the dining area, and then to the door of her apartment.

Hux hesitated briefly after he stepped out and shut her door, listened to the maglocks engaging automatically behind him. He nodded silently, satisfied, and then walked back to the elevator lobby. This high in the hab-block almost all of the tenants on this floor worked executive-level jobs, and therefore Hux found himself alone in the lobby and the elevator car. He watched the numbers blinking up and up as he rose, each floor leaving him behind until he was at the very top of this tower, right outside his quarters. 

Home wasn’t the right word for it, not really, but there it was. A space he could control, at least, a place to rest his head when he was weary, it was close enough to home for most intents and purposes, and he would have to make it do. The maglocks on his door unlocked once he was on his own doorstep; the door hissed open to admit him. It was dark inside - the penthouse’s lights were not set to automatically brighten this late in the night. The darkness did not bother Hux, however. Instead his enhanced eyes adjusted swiftly and easily to low-light mode, superimposing its ghostly green light over everything he saw. His bags and Ren’s sat where they had been left while he had been away, on the hardwood floor just beyond the doorframe. He would deal with those later.

Hux paused at the open door of Kylo Ren’s bedroom and glanced briefly at the iso-tank to make sure all was in good order. Satisfied, he shut the manual door quietly and stepped into his adjoining bedroom through the jack-and-jill bathroom. It was more of a place to live in than Ren’s bedroom had been, with an actual double bed, a wardrobe, a wall-mounted monitor if Hux ever wanted to watch anything on a screen larger than his own retinas. There was also a comfortable armchair beneath a reading lamp, an enormous sideboard that held several shot glasses and a bottle of 21 year old Glenfiddich in a tray on its top. 

Hux greeted those familiar things with silent relief, relaxed minutely in these comforting surroundings. He stripped swiftly, pulling his clothing off to hang it all up in the laundry cabinet for cleaning. The interior of the cabinet self-illuminated, a soft white light, as he hung everything up on the broad plastic hangers made for it. The darkened glass panel in the door turned translucent as he shut it and flipped the locking lever, turned it on. A soft mist began to fill the interior of the cabinet as it began to nano-clean and deodorize Hux’s clothing. 

A double-tap of a fingertip on the glass and it darkened again, so the light would not disturb him while he tried to rest. By tomorrow his suit would be as fresh as it had been when he collected it from the tailors’, minus the usual wear and tear. He paused naked by the sideboard and hesitated over the whisky as he pressed his right hand against a reader hidden in the wood veneering its surface. 

The passive reader read the chip installed in his palm and the lock beeped softly. A camouflaged glass panel darkened against the wood grain of the top drawer front, blinked once, and then displayed a keypad. Hux poured himself a finger of whisky, just a taste of it as he punched the eight-digit code in automatically. The keypad beeped twice in response and then heavy locks disengaged with a chunking sound and a brief vibration that sloshed the whisky in the bottle of Glenfiddich minutely.

The sideboard’s construction was armored metal and polymer under the antiqued wood veneer, its drawers padded and lined with dark blue velvet nests, each niche a different shape. Hux put his shotglass down on the top of the sideboard and ignored the whisky for the moment, thought hard at the holsters hidden in his left arm and right thigh. The prostheses whirred softly as the concealed holsters both popped out of their housings. From those he drew a pair of pistols, one sleek and minimal, the other one blocky and heavy, removed also the full magazines from the reloaders built into the holsters. 

Both holsters retracted into his body, a status notification blinking into the left of Hux’s augmented vision as he performed a manual safety check on each pistol. HOLSTER 1 EMPTY. HOLSTER 2 EMPTY. He pressed the mag release on each one, the movements swift and sure and routine, pulled back the slide to ensure that there wasn’t a round chambered in either. Satisfied, he put each in the niche in which it belonged, and the magazines beside them. He would have to field-strip and clean them later, but that he could do tomorrow. 

Hux shut the drawer back up and heard the lock beep as it reengaged, and then padded soundlessly to the bathroom. There he brushed his teeth without even looking at the mirror and then stepped into the shower cubicle, stood under a torrent of water turned as hot as he could bear it as he began to wash Phasma off his skin, off the steel and carbon of his hardware. It was paranoid, he knew it, but sometimes he wondered if she was only fucking him to keep him sane and stable enough for work. _There’s no profit to it if Snoke’s pet button-man loses it,_ he thought with bleak amusement, _not after he’s spent so much time and money giving me a couture body so I’m his perfect status symbol, an elegant war crime in an dapper suit._

Hux sighed briefly and turned his face up to the water, let it drum on his skin for a few moments more before he turned it off. That kind of doubting was foolish, led to insanity. So what if she might be fucking him on orders? They enjoyed each other thoroughly when she did, and it always helped to soothe and ground him. He would accept it as it was, take what comfort he got, and not get greedy hoping for more. Not that he had the time or energy to maintain any other romantic relationships, not when Ren needed him so much and so often.

Hux snatched his warm towel off the heated towel bar, dried off swiftly and efficiently. Ren continued to sleep in the next room, in the last stages of NREM sleep as he began to dream in earnest. Hux was not privy to the contents of Ren’s dreaming mind, could only see his telemetry readouts, and so he did not bother guessing. He stopped at the sideboard and drained the shot glass he had left there, rolling the liquor around on his tongue and letting its smoky pear-and-pepper fragrance fill his head, swallowed it down hard as the alcohol burned in his gullet to sit bright and hot in the pit of his belly. That done, he fell into bed and pulled the sheets over himself, glanced wearily at the alarm clock on his nightstand. 

Tomorrow was another day, and he had Ren to take care of, a report to write, a debriefing to attend. He set the alarm for 8:30AM, rolled over, and went to sleep.


	2. Collation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux and Ren spend a quiet interlude as they both recover from the last mission they were on. I'm being nice to them here so it hurts more when I get evil later in the plot.
> 
> \---
> 
> Content warning: Very graphic character POV gore and mutilation.  
> Content warning: Discussion of personal boundaries and the potential for emotionally abusive boundary-crossing.  
> Content warning: Discussion of suicide.  
> Content warning: Discussion of self-harm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the references, folks. I got a bit clever with this one.

Snow crunched and squeaked under Armitage Hux’s boots as he ran, then slid behind cover in the form of a large shipping container. His exhalations smoked and steamed in the frigid air, and each breath was like an icicle crammed forcibly down his throat. He tried to catch his breath as he pressed his back to the container’s steel wall, tried to take stock of his situation. 

Hux owned a bullet hole in his left thigh and a graze on his hip just above it, both currently dripping red into the gray slush at his feet, staining it pink. He had slapped two color coded dermal patches on his wrist for the pain and shock, blue for endorphin analog, red for stimulant. His heart was beating hard enough to almost choke him, and he could hardly hear the hiss and static of his communications headset over the roar of his pulse in his ears. He also had two dead teammates, one wounded and screaming noisily for help, and a last one unaccounted for. He was armed with an untraceable Taiwanese knockoff of a German assault rifle that had been based on an American design, which he carried slung crosswise across his chest. With the rifle came a smartgun link and three magazines, two empty. He had seventeen rounds of .223 left in the third. 

He also carried a 9mm pistol on his right hip, an anonymous Argentinian copy of the old Browning Hi-Power, and that was fully loaded with two backup magazines, but the 9mm ammunition would do little against armored opponents like the ones he had encountered previously. This was supposed to be a routine op. This was supposed to be simple. The shipments were supposed to have been left unguarded, because who the fuck would waste manpower babysitting a wholly automated container port?

And this blizzard was not supposed to have hit until tomorrow. 

Next to Hux’s heart, over the long-sleeved thermal t-shirt under his armored vest, was the payload, the one thing that this shipment was supposed to all be cover for. If someone had asked Hux about it, he would have told them it looked like the world’s saddest cheese grater had a baby with a toner cartridge, and that he had absolutely no idea what it did. That was usually the smart thing to do in the _ronin_ business - it was usually in his best interests not to know what he had been paid to heist. 

But now, as Sebastian’s screams died out with a sudden popping report, Hux wished very much that he had told his client to take this fucking job and shove it, preferably up a part of their anatomy that only intimate partners saw on a regular basis. He was out of time. Do or die. He pressed his tongue to one of his teeth, pushed outward and felt it click in its socket. The world seemed to jump into jittery focus as his wired reflexes kicked in, seconds stretching as his personal perception of time became more acute. Translucent lines popped instantly into his vision as his smarteyes began to plot the shortest and most efficient course out of this installation, superimposed a helpful, discreet arrow to guide his way. 

Hux pulled the case of patches from the outside pocket of his parka, slapped a fresh blue across the inside of his wrist to the other side of the red one. Then he looked up, above him, tightened his rifle sling so it wouldn’t get in his way, and jumped. He could barely feel the wounds in his leg as the toes of his boots screeched softly against the steel of the container - this much endorphin analog would normally have him stumbling along wobbly-legged as though he had just been thoroughly fucked, and in a good way, if he weren’t already in serious pain. His gloved hands bit into the lip at the top of the container, slipped, and then caught again as he hauled himself desperately upwards. 

He pulled himself onto the top of the container and did not look behind him, only scrambled on his hands and knees down the other side, slipped into the snow and then made himself get up through sheer terror. A wrongness in his ankle told him he’d hurt himself landing, but he could not feel the pain through the blues, did not care as he ran desperately towards freedom. It could still take his weight, and that was all that mattered. All he had to do was lose the corpsec forces on the way out. His rifle could go in Lake Michigan, his sidearm in his coat, and he could do the vanishing trick he had done so many times before. 

Hux cleared the last shipping container, chose not to slow down to check his surroundings. Speed was his only defense now, seriously outnumbered as he was. He was almost past the port, was almost free and clear when he heard a roar and whine of gunfire as shots whickered and zinged all around him, kicking up ice and snow around his feet. He felt one impact like a hard punch on his right leg, and then two, and then he stopped counting as the world spun around him. He began to black out as he fell, felt the snow cold on his back as he did. 

The thud and crunch of Hux’s body impacting the ground jolted him out of unconsciousness. He found himself with his shoulders to a cold concrete wall, where he had fetched up after they had shot him. His eyes were filling with tears and the visibility low in this heavy snowfall but he realized at that point that he was staring dumbly into the multiple still-smoking barrels of a minigun. There was no pain, not yet, but he could tell from the ringing in his ears and the frightening sense of absence where his legs had been that he had been badly wounded and and was going into shock. He did not look down, did not want to know how severe his injuries were.

His left arm hung like dead weight off his shoulder, would not obey him. They were going to catch him, Hux realized dumbly, catch him and interrogate him for answers he would not be able to give, which meant that there was only one thing left to do. He could not find the rifle he had been carrying earlier. He fumbled instead at his hip to draw his sidearm so he could shoot himself before his captors got to him, and then shuddered when the fingers of his right hand found only raw, bleeding flesh and splintered bone. 

_Christ,_ he thought, and looked reflexively downwards, fought a sob of panic. His legs were gone. One lay a foot away from him, and the other had been reduced to shreds of tissue and bone fragments recognizable only by the boot sticking out and up from the slush. He could not feel his hips, could not feel anything other than the terrifying sensation of cold air on organs that should have been internal in most circumstances. 

_I’m dying,_ he realized, saw steam rising from the exposed pink loops of his intestines as they spilled out of his ruined belly onto the snow. He tried to laugh but lacked the strength and the breath, only managed a wet, messy cough that turned into a retch, tasted blood and bile and God knew what else welling up in the back of his throat. He stared emptily upward into the overcast sky as the corpsec shooters began to surround him. One of them knelt beside him and unzipped a kitbag - a medic, he thought numbly, felt a spike of terror rip through the unreality of shock and blood loss.

“No -” Hux managed to choke, “no. Let me die, _let me_ -” Someone took his right wrist and began to push his sleeve up, and he struggled weakly, tried to pull away. Another person seized his shoulders and held him down in the snow, and then there was a third person stumbling over to him, their steps squeaking on the patch of red growing around him, diluting to pink at the very edges. Not corpsec, he realized as he saw a pair of long black-clad legs enter his field of vision. They dropped to their knees in front of him, heedless of the blood and the wet and the snow. A gray peacoat, large pale hands sticking out of the sleeves, ungloved despite the cold. Nails bitten to the quick. 

“I’m sorry,” they said, as he felt the distant pressure and ache of someone shoving an intraosseous cannula into his sternum. The speaker’s face hovered over him, oddly disembodied, floating in Hux’s dimming vision as though he were surfacing out of still black waters. He was a beautiful young man, his eyes dull and sad in a narrow face shadowed with waves of dark, dark hair. _This is what Death must look like,_ Hux thought, wanted to reach out to him but could not as his shattered body began to shut down. _Please take me away from this,_ he tried and failed to whisper, his lips moving soundlessly as flakes of snow drifted around them. 

“I’m sorry. They wanted me to find you.” The young man was leaning in closer and closer, and Hux felt a warm hand brush against softly against his cheek. The touch comforted him, cold and numb as he was, and he closed his eyes, let himself slip easily away into the dark. _Take me away with you,_ he thought as he relinquished his grip on life, waited for Death to catch him as he fell.

\--- 

“Ren,” Hux said aloud as he opened his eyes, found himself wide awake as pale sunlight streamed in through the lower thirds of his bedroom windows. The top two thirds of the glass panes had darkened in response to the sunrise so that the light would not disturb his sleep. He sighed, trying to banish his nightmare as he sat up in bed, glanced at the alarm clock on his nightstand. 

It was not yet 8 AM. Hux had hoped to sleep the night through, but failed to, as usual. It wasn’t always the same dream, though. His treacherous brain had stockpiled more than enough fuel for a varied and interesting rotation of nightmares from the last twenty years of his life. He turned the alarm off on the clock, turned the sheets aside to get out of bed. He summoned his mail and messages as he walked to the bathroom, his fingers twitching ever so slightly as he called the contents of his inbox into the right side of his field of vision, glanced also at Ren’s telemetry while the display scrolled. 

Ren was still sleeping comfortably, and the iso-tank would begin to wake him at nine. This gave Hux a little more than an hour to sort himself out and make sure that he was fit for human interaction, which was something he needed to do no matter how poorly he was feeling today. Ren would need him, and he had unpacking to do, a report to write, guns to strip and clean and a debriefing to attend at 3PM. 

Hux paused in front of the commode, his left hand brushing the top of his thigh as his fingertips felt for a panel built into the side of his prosthetic. The panel popped off easily, hanging from a flexible polymer cord fastened to one of its corners. There was a small inset handle under it that he grasped and twisted to unlock a cylindrical waste cartridge, which he tugged out from its housing. He lifted the toilet seat, tapped the contents of the cartridge out into the bowl proper and flushed. Afterwards he rinsed the cartridge out with a small shower head built into the toilet tank for his personal convenience, and then pushed it back into his thigh with a soft click. The panel swung back up and seated itself in place with magnetic fasteners, and then it was off to the sink. 

A good deal of Hux’s original organs had been replaced or altered to support the magnitude of his augmentations. His liver had been boosted to store more glycogen and nullify the effects of alcohol and many poisons and drugs, among other things, and his lower GI had been overhauled completely. Hux’s replacement intestinal tract did not empty into the sigmoid colon proper, since he no longer possessed one. His remaining kidney had been similarly boosted and the ureter redirected. Both ureter and large intestine hooked up instead to a waste processing unit that reclaimed the remaining nutrients and water in his bodily waste, then broke it up into dry, odorless pellets that were then collected in a waste cartridge, which he periodically emptied as he did now. 

This had been done to simplify the installation of his new legs and pelvis, so Snoke’s engineers would not have to sacrifice structural strength for little things like his bladder and colon. It also made him far more efficient as a bodyguard and assassin. He didn’t need to take bathroom breaks, didn’t need to drink as frequently as he used to. His new body could recycle and store water so that he could still function for a week without reliable access to it, as long as he was supplied with enough high-calorie energy bars to keep fuelling his liver, which in turn powered his augmentations. Even the kinetic energy from his movements was harvested and used to charge batteries built into his prosthetic limbs, which he drew on when exerting himself hard in a combat situation. There was also a charging cable concealed in his left wrist that he could use _in extremis_ to hook himself up to a power point or a fuel cell for the purposes of recharging.

Hux pointedly ignored his reflection in the mirror as he washed his hands and brushed his teeth, and then stepped into the shower. He left the water tepid despite the cool temperatures and the heavy gray sky outside, let himself shiver into proper wakefulness as he went through his inbox, subject lines flaring in his right eye one by one. There wasn’t much, fortunately. An automated reminder of his debriefing later today, another informing him that his maintenance appointment had been rescheduled to accommodate the Florence job and was now scheduled from 4PM to 6PM today. A message from Phasma, inviting him and Ren over to dinner tomorrow evening, if nothing in their schedules conflicted. She promised a menu of wild mushroom risotto and braised, truffled veal, suggested that Hux bring the drinks this time round, since alcohol did not play well with several of Ren’s medications.

Hux felt that his calendar was being rather optimistic about the length of his debriefing, and pushed the maintenance appointment back to 4:30PM as he toweled off. He thought about shaving today, wondered if he actually wanted to stare at his changed face in the mirror this morning. _Not after this nightmare, no,_ he thought, and decided to keep the stubble. There was nothing in corporate dress code against it, after all, and if Snoke was offended by his scruffiness, well. Hux felt a hot spark of meanness warm his heart and shook his head briefly at this petty “fuck you” to his owner-overlord. Something so insignificant as this did about as much as pissing in the wind would - and he couldn’t even do _that_ any more. Nevertheless that tiny rebellion lifted his mood slightly, and he felt a little better as he stepped out into his bedroom and shut the door behind him.

Hux pulled his threadbare bathrobe on and fastened the tie around his waist, and then went to his open wardrobe to pick his clothes out for the day. He had divided his suits into two sections, separated by his collection of shirts. The ones on the left, beside his cleaning cabinet, were the ones he wore on missions, with discreet armor sewn into the waistcoat and coat canvases, access to his thigh holster through the right trouser pocket, the fabrics all impregnated with a hydrophobic, stain-resistant coating.

The suits on the right, on the other hand, were the ones he wore day-to-day, without the extra weight of armor panels. It wasn’t as though the weight bothered him that much any more, but it did affect the drape and hang of the garments themselves. It was projected to stay below freezing today, with sleet forecast through the afternoon and early evening. This meant that it would be best to wear something warm to preserve the little body heat his meager flesh retained. He picked out a pearl-gray slub silk shirt with French cuffs and matched it to one of his tweed suits. The bulky fabric would trap air and help insulate him against the cold. 

Hux laid his selections out on the bed, and then stepped out of his bedroom to acquire himself some breakfast. He popped two premixed coffee pods into the fast-brewer, one for him and one for Ren, and then opened the refrigerator to glance at its contents. Hux did not cook, and Ren could not, being forbidden knives and other sharp objects for his own safety, and so their kitchen consisted entirely of a dishwasher and sink, a microwave, the fast-brewer on the countertop and a cabinet and drawers for their plates and utensils. Their meals were all premade heat-and-eat entrees complete with sides, each packaged in a biodegradable tray and sealed with film. As a whole they were nothing special, consisting of seasoned and formed krill, vat-meat or mycoprotein alongside two servings of vegetables and a carbohydrate of some kind. They were fairly tasty, however, and quite inoffensive as fuel went, which Hux appreciated. He did not miss the early days where energy bars and nutrient slurries were the only sustenance his altered body could accept.

Hux read the labels stuck to the sides of each tray, shrugged and pulled one of the breakfast ones out at random. He peeled a corner of the film up, popped the whole thing into the microwave, and set it to heat. He then reached into one of the the pantry cabinets and pulled out a box full of children’s breakfast cereal, filled a soft-edged silicone bowl with sugar-frosted flakes and tiny marshmallows, and drowned the whole mess under a small lake of soymilk. He took those and his coffee to the dining table, collected the rest of his breakfast when the microwave beeped. 

This particular tray held scrambled eggs and sausage, hash browns with mushrooms and peppers, and French toast, and Hux let it cool while he made his way through the cereal in his bowl. His and Ren’s habitual places at the table were its only bare spots, the rest being covered with the hardcopy books that Ren preferred to read. He leafed idly through one of the novels as he ate, more for distraction than a real desire for something to do. Ren had the habit of leaving marginalia in books he had read, and Hux smiled quietly to himself as his gaze passed over the uneven lines of writing on each page. Ren’s hand was still a little wobbly, but the letters were already developing little swoops and flourishes that would eventually become part of his handwriting. 

It was 8:40 AM when Hux finished his breakfast. He whiled the time away, busying himself with washing and wiping his cup and bowl and utensils manually because he had very little else to do while he waited for Ren to wake. At 8:55 AM he placed the wet items on the countertop to dry, wiped his hands on a tea towel, and then stepped into Ren’s bedroom. 

The numbers on the iso-tank display had started to blink briefly as the seconds counted down, and Hux was waiting and ready when the tank began to drain. The lid unlocked automatically and hissed as the seals opened, and Hux pulled it open before leaning in to help Ren with his breather mask. 

“Good morning, Ren,” Hux said softly as he pulled the mask off Ren’s face, felt a welcome stab of poignancy as Ren greeted him with a goofy, drowsy smile. Ren was an incredibly dangerous person to be around; this was one of the reasons Snoke had built Hux to be as resilient and lethal as he was. He was meant to be the ultimate failsafe if Ren ever lost it and decided to destroy everything around him. Cranial explosives were not an option in this case, as Snoke did not want to risk damaging Ren’s capacity for psionics. And yet Hux’s heart melted whenever he saw Ren smile, quiet pleasure turning into heartache as he remembered, each and every time. As Ren’s handler Hux was constantly aware of the confined, etiolated life that Ren was forced to live, knew that he was complicit in every second of Ren’s imprisonment and had been for five years and counting.

Hux savored the emotional pain as he had the physical last night, when Phasma had closed her fingers upon his hair and pulled hard, until the nerve endings in his scalp screamed. It was yet another reminder of his humanity, and he valued and treasured each tiny hurt in its own unique way, like the imagined faces of children that he could no longer father.

Ren yawned widely as he stirred against the padded bottom of the iso-tank, propped himself slowly up on his elbows as Hux worked. “Good morning, Hux,” he said, closed his eyes contentedly when Hux began to pull the adhesive electrodes off the skin of his chest. 

“I hope you slept well,” Hux murmured as he pulled away to pluck the last electrode off Ren’s brow, reached out to help him sit upright. “How are you feeling?” 

“I’ve still got a headache, but it’s not too bad,” Ren sighed, squinted faintly against the pain as his eyes adjusted to the light. “You look - tired,” he murmured as he looked into Hux’s face, his warm gaze veiled by his long eyelashes. 

Hux did not make a habit of lying to Ren; it wasn’t really because honesty was good for their relationship, but simply because Ren always knew, neural shielding or no. Nevertheless, he tried to dissemble, forced a smile onto his face as he shook his head. “I just had trouble sleeping, I’ll be okay.” 

Ren’s fingers closed around his so tightly that Hux was sure Ren was bruising his own palm in doing so. “You had a nightmare, Hux, didn’t you?” Ren asked him very quietly, and there it was, the truth laid naked and vulnerable, exposed.

Hux shook his head at how futile his evasion had been, brushed Ren’s wet hair out of his eyes this time as he worked his fingers free of Ren’s grip. “You’re not supposed to be able to read my thoughts, you know,” he laughed weakly.

Ren shrugged easily. “I don’t need to read your mind to see that you haven’t shaved, and I know you hate looking at the mirror when you’ve had a bad dream.” He stood and stepped out of the iso-tank with Hux’s assistance, and walked unsteadily into the bathroom, his wet feet slapping on the wood floor. Hux stripped his own bathrobe off and stepped naked into the shower with Ren. 

In the shower cubicle Hux scrubbed gently at Ren’s scalp, helped him wash the psi-inert fluid out of his hair, from behind his ears, scraped adhesive residue from the electrodes off his chest and brow. Hux did not kiss or caress Ren as he did those things. He kept his manner light and professional, touched Ren only when he needed to, because this caretaking was never supposed to be sexual. He tried to maintain those boundaries in their lives as well as he could - a chancy thing when his responsibilities included having to satisfy Ren’s sexual needs - and he had been taught enough to know how breaching those boundaries could only harm Ren’s fragile sense of selfhood. 

It was hard enough for Ren to identify his own thoughts when swamped with those of others. Blurring the line between sex and professional care would only make it harder for Ren to understand and articulate his own wishes and desires. While this kind of emotionally abusive behavior would in theory bind Ren closer to him and make him easier to control, it was something that Hux would never countenance, if only because he chafed constantly at Snoke’s control of his own body and life. That was not the only reason he did it, though. He did it also because he had loved Ren fiercely and desperately since the first time they had met six years ago, on that blood-soaked winter night. 

\---

“What’s the timetable like today?” Ren asked as they sat together at the dining table. Hux always let Ren handle his own medications and reheat his own meals, contrary to his official instructions, so that Ren too could exercise what little control he had over his own life. He had picked out one of his favorite breakfasts today, the Japanese-style one with egg rice topped with faux cod roe and sesame salt, a slice of salted vat-salmon, miso soup with tofu and seaweed and a snap-off side portion of sweet-tart pickles, which did not need to go in the microwave. 

“I have a report to write right now, but that shouldn’t take long. Later I have to attend a debriefing at 3PM, and then undergo routine maintenance from 4:30PM to 6:30PM,” Hux said as he glanced up from the slim tablet before him. He had plucked an apple from the fruit bowl and supplemented it with cheese and smoked sausage. “I’m free otherwise, and I don’t think you have any checkups today.” 

Ren’s morning pills were lined up in a neat, colorful row beside his coffee cup. An over-the-counter painkiller for his fading headache, a serotonin-targeting extended-release antidepressant, another antidepressant pill that enhanced his dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake, a nootropic which improved his alertness while he recovered from his recent overuse of his powers, and a psi suppressant, which he took three times a day whenever he was not on duty. “I could have mine pushed forward,” Ren suggested before he lifted the bowl of miso soup set into the tray, took a long sip. “I mean, Medical’s gotta send a team to keep an eye on me while you’re away anyhow. Might as well get that done with.” 

Hux glanced up from his tablet in the keyboard tray, away from the report he had been drafting, to look straight at Ren. “I don’t want to rush you if you’re not comfortable with it,” he said, “I know how much you hate medicals.” A life spent in a laboratory had left Ren deeply anxious about medical procedures, to the point where staff had to tranquilize him for routine tests and checkups.

“I’ll be okay, I think. We could do something nice while you’re here,” Ren mused before he scooped up a spoonful of rice and ate it, picked a small piece of salted salmon off the perfectly rectangular filet. “Like a small treat or something, then I’ll be in a better mood about it.” Hux brought up Ren’s appointment schedule in his enhanced vision, moved the checkup to this afternoon and notified Medical that he would need relief from 3PM to 6:30PM.

“Done,” he said, also remembering Phasma’s message, which was something that would cheer Ren up. “Also, Phasma’s invited us to dinner at her place, tomorrow. She’s really happy about the truffles, so that was a really good idea. Do you think you can handle an hour or two in her apartment, or should I ask her to postpone it?” 

“I’m glad she likes them,” Ren smiled shyly, glanced down at his tray of breakfast, looked back up at Hux. “Last night. She was good to you, I hope.” There was no pain in Ren’s voice, just a gentle need to know that things had gone well. 

“Yes,” Hux smiled softly, grateful that Ren cared so much for him. He did not deserve it, he felt, but he was also no longer proud enough to reject it out of hand. “She was kind and generous to me,” he said, “and she fed me very well.” 

“Good.” Ren ate another fragment of salmon, chased it with a slice of sweet yellow pickle. “You spend so much time taking care of me, sometimes I worry that you don’t really have anyone to take care of you.” Ren knew that Hux and Phasma fucked occasionally, and had known since Hux had entered his mutually beneficial arrangement with her three years ago. Never ever in that time had Hux sensed any hostility or jealousy whenever Ren mentioned it, like now.

“You know I’m here because I want to be with you,” Hux said softly against the ache of emotion, much of it tangled in complicated knots somewhere in his chest. Relief and guilt, a deep joy, worry and love and resentment at the circumstances that had chained them together like this. _Were that I could set you free,_ Hux thought at Ren, wondered if he could hear it through the shielding and the suppressants. _I would willingly spend the rest of my life in a cell if I knew for sure that you would be unharmed and allowed to be happy._

Ren gazed at Hux, his dark eyes suddenly very bright, and then he was averting his gaze as he picked at his breakfast again. “Yeah,” he said, as though their previous exchange had not happened at all, “I think I’ll be okay. Yeah, let’s go see Phasma for dinner tomorrow. Do you know what she’s going to do with the truffles?” 

“Phasma’s making, I quote: _‘wild mushroom risotto and braised, truffled veal’_ , which sounds bloody decadent,” Hux said, reading the message over in his enhanced vision again, for accuracy’s sake. “She wants us to bring drinks, and I want to bring her some kind of extravagant dessert, you know - Tiramisu or something similar.” 

Ren grinned wickedly then, chuckled softly. “Because you’ll eat half of it anyway,” he said.

Hux sighed in willing defeat, beaten solely by the sweet sharpness in Ren’s warm gaze, “That I will,” he said.

\---

Hux and Ren sat out in the rooftop garden after breakfast. It was one of Ren’s favorite places to be - not that he had much choice in that concern - but it was a tranquil, pretty place, and Hux liked it quite a bit himself. The dining room of the penthouse opened into this garden, which was enclosed with a roof and walls made from psi-shielded armored glass that darkened and cleared to admit exactly the right amount of sunlight to keep the plants healthy at any given time of day, no matter the season. Supplemental lighting had been installed discreetly over each plant bed, and there was no flooring, just a carpet of dwarf mutant grass growing thickly over rich dirt, soft and gently spiky under the feet. 

A pair of drones tended the garden as Hux and Ren lay side by side on a picnic blanket and stared up through the glass into the leaden clouds above. One crawled crablike through the plants on skinny, extensible legs, trimming dead leaves and flowers as it went, and the other hovered around a miniature quince tree like an oversized dragonfly, misting its leaves lightly to increase the humidity. Each and every plant here was either nontoxic or had been engineered to knock out the genetic sequences that would create dangerous alkaloids or cyanides. Snoke was a careful man, and he didn’t like to take any chances with his pet psion. Even the soil had been heat-sterilized before it had been laid down, and then inoculated with beneficial bacteria when compost was added, so as to eliminate the possibility of weeds and negate the requirement for pesticides. 

One feature stood out in this oasis of calm and beauty: a dead, mutilated tree with a child’s swing hanging from it. The lone branch holding the swing had been reinforced, the seat hung higher to accommodate Ren’s adult height and weight. Its installation four years ago had left Hux rather baffled - the thing was arse-ugly and a potential hanging hazard, to say the least, and the groundskeeping staff had dug out a perfectly healthy bed of flowers to make room for its dried, sad-looking root ball. Ren had greeted the tree with a quiet, understated delight, however, and Hux would later catch him leaning his cheek against the rough bark. At other times he sat thoughtfully in the swing, his stare unfocused as his thoughts went elsewhere. 

Ren loved the tree, gnarled and hideous as it was, so Hux learned to like it too, even though its presence meant an end to Ren’s unsupervised access to the garden. In practice Hux only locked the door when he was forced to leave Ren alone in the penthouse, because he felt that he could “supervise” Ren perfectly well as long as they were both in the same living space. In return Ren promised not to harm himself or attempt suicide using the tree - they both knew that Snoke would have it removed and destroyed if Ren ever got hurt around it.

“It looks like you’re thinking about something,” Ren said quietly as he rolled over onto his side to glance at Hux, who was staring straight up through the transparent roof. He had picked out a bird with his better-than-perfect vision, and was watching it circle the penthouse roof, its black wings spread wide.

“Can you see that?” Hux asked Ren, pointing upward with a gloved finger to indicate the crow. “He’s flying slowly, so it shouldn’t be hard.” Ren did not have augmented vision as Hux had, but his eyesight was fairly good and it wouldn’t be a problem for him to spot it.

Ren tipped his chin upwards to look for the bird, smiled when he saw it. “It must be fun to be a bird, getting to fly around like that,” he sighed pensively as he kept his gaze locked on the creature. The sun was now attenuated and diluted behind heavy layers of clouds, which meant that Ren could keep looking upwards without being bothered by sunlight.

“I think it’d depend on what kind of bird I was,” Hux mused. He felt his pulse quicken within him as Ren reached over to take his hand, their fingers intertwining, leather against living skin. “I wouldn’t want to be a small songbird, for one. Everything from cats and snakes to kestrels would want to eat me. I’m too old and tired to run, I suppose.” 

“Or fly, in this case,” Ren teased gently. The crow was joined by another, the both of them swooping gracefully to to the peaked roof of the garden. 

“Or fly, yes,” Hux said, grinned back at Ren, who had fallen silent as he watched the birds caw noisily to each other. One of them stepped off the roof ridge, its feet slipping on the wet glass with a tiny screech as it slid slowly downwards. It flapped its wings hard just as it reached the end, circled back around and landed beside its companion in a triumphant manner. 

“I think - I think he’s playing on the roof,” Ren whispered to Hux, fascinated at their antics.

“You’re probably right,” Hux said as he turned on the recording function in his eyes just in time to catch the second crow sliding experimentally down the sloped glass. It fell a short distance at the end before regaining its equilibrium and spreading its wings to swoop back to the rooftop. 

Ren did not say anything, only laughed with pure joy as the first bird demonstrated the slide again. Hux decided then to just lie back and record the pair for as long as they kept playing, if only so he could store the video in case Ren wanted to see it again. They watched the birds cavort for five or ten minutes and Ren let out a soft, sad sigh as they flew away after that, dwindling dot-like into the distance. 

Hux did not have to ask what Ren was thinking at that point, non-sensitive as he was. It was something he was thinking himself. _I wish we could both fly away like that and leave everything behind. Just to be._ It was a yearning that pricked strongly in his nose and eyes, and he fought the tears then, took a deep breath to calm himself before he broke down. 

“I’m glad we saw that,” Ren said softly, unprompted, “it was fun. I wonder if they’ll let me put out a birdfeeder or something like that. The birds could come in through a skylight, and it’s not like I can jump out of there,” he suggested helpfully. 

“I can put in the request if you want,” Hux said, but he knew the answer was probably going to be _no._ Nevertheless he liked the visual of Ren smiling from his swing as he watched birds peck at the seed in the feeder. _It would be good for the both of us,_ he thought, made a mental note to have some nature documentaries downloaded for Ren’s entertainment later today.

“Yeah,” Ren propped himself up on an elbow to look into Hux’s face again, kissed him slowly and carefully on the lips. Hux let his eyes slip closed and reached up to stroke Ren’s soft hair as he reciprocated, their tongues meeting just a little through slightly parted lips. 

“My blackbird,” Hux whispered to Ren, their faces mere inches apart, _“Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”_

Ren paused, his gaze intent, almost glowing as he pondered the words that Hux had just recited. “What’s that from, a poem?” he asked, and then kissed Hux full on the mouth again. 

Hux let go of Ren’s hand, tangled his fingers in his hair. “A song my mum used to sing to me when I was very small,” he whispered between kisses as Ren began to work at the knot of his necktie, at the collar of his shirt. Hux had not bothered to put his waistcoat or jacket on earlier, not for breakfast, and he was suddenly very glad of it. “The song was very old even then,” he said as he ran his gloved hand gently under Ren’s shirt, to touch and enjoy the life and heat of him.

“How’s the rest of it go?” Ren breathed against Hux’s mouth, did not resist when Hux pulled his face down for the painful comfort of another deep kiss, did not mind the scrape of stubble against his full lips and narrow jaw. 

_“All your life,”_ Hux whispered fervently in Ren’s ear as they caught their breath, _“You were only waiting for this moment to arrive.”_ Ren’s hair fell to tickle lightly at Hux’s cheek, and he took a deep appreciative breath, savored the smell of Ren’s soap and shampoo and the soft body-musk of him under those scents. 

Ren shivered softly under Hux’s touch, slipped a leg over his to grind softly against him through cotton, denim and tweed. “I would fly away only if I could take you with me, my peregrine.” He was aroused, Hux could tell, grinned wickedly at the heat and hardness he could feel through those frustrating layers of clothing.

“You only call me that because of the branding on my eyes,” Hux teased. Ren made a little sound then between a gasp and a groan, biting his lip as Hux slipped two fingers beneath the waistband of his jeans to tease the skin just above his arse.

“No, _peregrine_ is a really old word,” Ren panted as he continued to roll his hips in sweet frottage against Hux. “It used to mean traveller, and people named the falcon for it because they migrate.” Ren was trembling now from the friction on his cock and from Hux’s thumb tip circling his nipple lightly, hungry for more sensation. “Neither of us are really from here, so we’re both kinda peregrines. I read it in one of those books you brought back for me.” 

Hux pulled his hand from under Ren’s shirt, tugged gently at his hair to bring him in for another kiss. “Where did you come from, Ren?” he asked as they pulled briefly apart for air, “You’ve never told me.”

Ren stopped moving, stared sadly and seriously into Hux’s eyes. “That’s because I don’t remember any more,” he said wretchedly. “But I know I’m not from here, and never was.” 

Hux could hear the break in Ren’s voice that threatened tears, cursed himself silently for asking that foolish question. “Shhhh,” he said, rolling Ren gently over onto his back. “It’s okay. I’m here with you. Let me take care of you.” 

“Please,” Ren sobbed on a long, shuddery breath as a single tear slipped out of his eye to vanish in the wavy thicket of his unruly hair. “I need you,” he sobbed against Hux’s mouth as they kissed again and again. Ren’s spit was salty from crying, and Hux could only whisper soothingly to him in between each scalding touch and burning sigh. 

“It’s okay,” Hux whispered, soothing Ren with his mouth and tongue, pressing brief kisses to the angle of his jawline, the pale, delicate skin of his neck, lapping slowly and lovingly over the old scars criss-crossing down the insides of his forearms. “I love you. I love all of you, even the scars and the bad parts. I love you as you are.” 

“I know you do now,” Ren gasped, as Hux started to unfasten his jeans - he was permitted neither belt nor shoelaces unless the situation and dress code required it - which was rarely. “Please don’t change that.”

“Shh,” Hux said again as he worked his way down the button fly of Ren’s jeans, tugged them and his underwear gently down his hips to expose that beautiful, eager cock. “Just be, Ren,” Hux murmured, “Just be here, be mine in this moment.” It was something they had adapted from one of Ren’s mindfulness exercises, something that Hux told Ren every time he needed reassurance, such as now.

“Yes,” Ren sighed softly. Hux saw him frown with his eyes shut, knew that he was willing himself to relax, and he paused his attentions to rub gently at Ren’s shoulders until the tension bled out of them. “I didn’t say you could stop,” Ren whispered, his eyes still closed when Hux straightened back up to take him all in, vulnerable and alive in this fragile moment. 

“I could just keep rubbing your shoulders if you like,” Hux offered seriously. He stroked Ren’s forehead again, knowing that it calmed him more than anything else to be touched like that. Ren’s body was relaxing with each caress, his muscles slackening as he settled back onto the blanket with the green grass under his back. 

“No.” Ren opened his eyes then and placed a hand on Hux’s belly, sliding his fingers into the placket of his shirt between buttons to brush gently against the scars on his skin. “I meant the other thing,” he told Hux, his wicked smile returning faintly as the touch prompted a shudder of delight. 

“Ah,” Hux said, suitably chastened. 

“Undo your shirt, Hux,” Ren huffed impatiently, “I want to feel more of your skin.”

Hux obeyed, working his slow way down the placket front of his slub silk shirt. “What little of it I still have, in any case,” he said as he let it hang open in a narrow V to bare a sliver of his chest and belly. Hux sometimes liked to stay half-dressed in sexual situations, liked to pretend that he hadn’t actually been carved up and reassembled into what he actually was, and he knew that Ren knew it too. 

“It’s enough for me,” Ren whispered upwards as Hux leaned in to kiss him again. “I love the freckles on your shoulders and your chest,” he said as he slipped his hand into Hux’s open shirt to tease his nipples gently. “I like to imagine that they’re stars in a sky I’ve never seen.”

“A really pasty sky,” Hux laughed. The comparison touched him deeply, reminded him of exactly why he loved Ren so much. It was not something he felt out of pity or responsibility, or mere comfort-seeking. No, he loved Ren for the person he was right now, futurity be damned, and he would continue loving Ren forever even if they never moved past this point in their circumscribed lives.

“Yeah, well,” Ren smiled as though he were reading Hux’s mind again, “I spent most of my life in an underground lab until I met you, I think I win the goth contest.” 

The wicked little joke twisted sweetly at Hux’s vitals, made him gasp in breathtaking love and pain. “Oh, Kylo Ren, whatever shall I do about you?” Hux sighed in mock exasperation.

“I want to come on your skin, Hux,” Ren told him simply, his expression oddly serious. “Can I?” 

“Yes, you may,” Hux managed, his mouth gone dry with arousal and amazement at how talented Ren was at pushing those particular buttons of his. He let Ren roll him over onto his back, lay passive and still while Ren straddled his hips, rubbed the underside of his cock experimentally against the scarred skin of his belly.

Ren hissed softly against the sensation, ground himself harder against Hux this time. “What if I screw up and mess up your clothes? That’s a really nice shirt,” he said, trailing his fingertips against the slippery silk. Hux read the anticipation in his gaze, the avidity and grinned.

He shrugged with mock nonchalance, knowing that the visual would drive Ren half-mad with desire. “Then you mess it up,” he said. “I take it off, shove it in the cleaning cabinet, and pick something new to wear.” Ren’s thrusts were steadier now that he found a rhythm and angle that pleased him best, and Hux’s hips twitched futilely upward in useless reflex as he read the hunger and need in Ren’s half-closed eyes and wet, trembling mouth.

“Do I get to choose what you wear this time?” Ren asked, shivering as Hux played him gently and slowly, teasing him intimately with fantasy and his fingertips, his words and the accent he said them in, the weight of desire in his voice. 

“Only if you’re very good,” Hux purred as he reached out with his gloved hands to grasp Ren by the hips, traced his thumbs lightly over the sharp ridges of his iliac crests, “Or very, very naughty, in this case.”

“Use your hand on me then,” Ren gasped desperately, “Keep your glove on. I like how -” He did not get to finish that sentence, as Hux licked a broad stripe across the palm of his right hand and took hold of Ren’s cock, the soft glove leather creaking faintly as he did. Ren keened prettily at the slippery friction, his head thrown back in abandon as Hux began to stroke him quickly, mercilessly. 

Ren’s inner thighs were tense and trembling against Hux’s hips, the soft skin of his scrotum hot against Hux’s hard belly, and he bit down on his full lip as he fell into rhythm with Hux’s attentions, his hips bucking as Hux tightened and loosened his fingers alternately around that hot, hungry cock.

“Come on me,” Hux coaxed as he read the pace of Ren’s thrusts, felt his balls tightening against his stomach. Ren was so close now, sweat soaking through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, his desperation writ large in every taut line of his lean body. “You know you want to paint me wet, wipe yourself off on my expensive shirt, you bad, bad man. Maybe I’ll even let you lick my glove clean if you ask nicely.” 

Ren whimpered loudly then, arching up into Hux’s grip as he came messily, copiously onto Hux’s chest and belly. His spunk was hot and sticky against Hux’s skin, its faintly bleachy scent mingling with the smells of Hux’s sweat and skin, his cologne. Hux let go of Ren’s cock then, stroked his hip idly and gently and let him catch his breath. 

Ren’s chest was still heaving under his wet t-shirt as he climbed off Hux and rolled over to lie on his side, his eyes shut. Hux leaned half over to kiss him on the bridge of his nose, heedless of the come dripping off his flank to puddle on the silk of his shirt. Oh well, Hux thought, shrugged mentally. It wasn’t as though he was going to keep wearing it today, damp with sweat as it was. 

“I’m going to have to get up soon to clean up, and so will you if you’re serious about choosing my clothes for me,” Hux murmured to Ren after a few minutes of silence, as they lay wearily together side by side.

“No, I don’t,” Ren laughed tiredly, let out a soft sigh of contentment as he stared up into the sky, his eyes half closed. “I don’t care if the team from Medical can smell that we’ve fucked. Let’em get all uncomfortable about it.” 

Hux pressed his mouth to Ren’s forehead, tasted the salty bite of his sweat. “Serves them right for all those procedures?” he suggested. Ren’s dark hair had fanned out on top of the picnic blanket, surrounding his head like an tarnished halo, and it was always times like now, his face slack with relief and endorphins, that Hux found him most beautiful.

“Yeah,” Ren sighed, closed his eyes again. “Exactly. I don’t know how I have any blood left at all, the way they keep testing it.” 

The thought of Ren wearing his scent through the day like this brought a strange thrill to the pit of Hux’s belly, one that warmed him from within. Nevertheless, it was probably smarter to not antagonize Medical, not when it was so easy for them punish Ren for it. “You won’t get to scrub me down in the shower if you decide to stay here,” he said, choosing a suitable incentive.

“Point,” Ren admitted. “Just give me a couple more minutes so I can figure out how to walk again.” Now that was a familiar problem, Hux thought half-ruefully, remembering how long it had taken him to get used to this body moved.

“I’ll carry you, if you want,” Hux offered helpfully. “You know I can.” 

“And crack my head against the doorframe,” Ren laughed, “No, I’ll wait, and you can wait with me.”

“Yes,” Hux said simply. “Yes, I can.”


	3. First Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux gets to meet his owner-employer Snoke in person, and in that meeting he learns some very unwelcome information about his friend and lover, Natalia Phasma. Those revelations cut her to the quick.
> 
> \---
> 
> Content warning: Emotionally abusive behavior.  
> Content warning: Subtle and unsubtle dehumanization of people.  
> Content warning: Snoke is a horrible person, but we all knew that already.  
> Content warning: Virtual slavery of sapient entities who are treated as playthings and equipment.

Hux found Phasma standing beside the VTOL on the rooftop landing pad, waiting for him. He checked the time in his HUD. 2:30PM. That was more than enough time for the brief hop over to the Detroit end of the CDMA, which was where his debriefings usually took place. Most of the time, Hux went alone to the private office in the geofront sublevels of the Detroit arcology, where he would sit at a conference table while Snoke spoke personally to him via holopresence. 

Hux had never been allowed to meet Snoke in person; an obvious security measure considering that Hux was capable of murdering Snoke before the CEO could even trigger his cranial explosives. Phasma’s presence suggested that Snoke had something else in mind today, however.

“Are you going to sit in on the debriefing today?” Hux asked her as he stepped out onto the landing pad beside her, his gray raincoat flapping in the wind. She had not worn her raincoat today, only a formally cut corduroy blazer in a rich mossy green and slim trousers in a navy blue twill. A lace-trimmed scarf peeked from the open collar of her blouse, added a touch of softness to the rigid lines of her blazer.

“Something like that, yes,” she said as the wind stirred their hair into disorder. “Get in the front. We’re not using autopilot today.” 

Hux blinked behind the industrial sapphire of his protective lenses, retracted them as he climbed in the passenger-side door of the VTOL. The flight control board was live, the lights on the console winking on and off as he fastened the four-point harness seat belt. Phasma slipped effortlessly into the pilot’s seat and put on her headset, performing a swift preflight check in a brisk, professional manner as the doors hissed shut around them. 

“Chicago Center,” Phasma said coolly as the the thrusters came on, began to idle, “This is Security November Foxtrot Two, ready at Pad 27.” 

“Security November Foxtrot Two,” came the calm, neutral voice from the arcology flight control center, “This is Chicago Center, we read you.” 

Phasma flipped one toggle, two, and then pushed smoothly up on the thrust bars, one two three, feeding a trickle of fuel to the VTOL’s jet engines. A low rumble became a sharp whine, the sound muffled by the sealed fuselage around them. 

Phasma checked the readouts on the console, glanced around to make sure that Hux had fastened his seat belt before she closed her fingers over the flight yoke. “Security November Foxtrot Two requesting permission for takeoff from Pad 27.” 

“Security November Foxtrot Two, this is Chicago Center, cleared for immediate takeoff Pad 27. Traffic is 10 miles out for Pad 14,” came the reply from the air traffic controller.

The whine became a scream, and the scream a subdued roar as Phasma increased the fuel flow to the jet engines. “Security November Foxtrot Two, roger, cleared for takeoff.” She engaged the supplementary thrusters then, and their shriek joined the rumble of the jets as the VTOL rose slowly and easily into the air. Inertia dragged briefly at Hux, the pit of his belly sinking almost as gravity grasped futilely at their rise into the sky.

“You’ve brought your report, I hope,” Phasma said as they cleared the arcology-level air traffic to coast at a higher altitude. 

“Of course I have.” Hux carried his AAR on an encrypted memory spike in a coat pocket as he always did for debriefings, and turned them in to high-level security staff once he had arrived at the Detroit geofront. Information this sensitive was almost always couriered by hand for the sake of institutional and operational security. It was amusing how communications had evolved, first to make messengers obsolete, and then to reintroduce them when channels failed to stay secure.

“Good. Mr. Snoke will want to see it today,” Phasma said. Flakes of snow landed intermittently on the VTOL’s windshield, melted almost instantly. It would be snow this high up, but it was presently 38 degrees Fahrenheit at ground level, and not nearly cold enough for it to stick. No, it would melt partially on the way down and land as sleet. Below them the nanocloud swaddling the Chicago arcology responded to the increased humidity, thickening gradually as it did to strip pollutants from the precipitation as it fell.

Hux turned his face towards Phasma, glanced meaningfully at her. “You mean that I’m going to give my report directly to him, in person.” This was it, then. Snoke preferred to run his empire from telepresence, and there had been ongoing staff rumors that he was actually a rogue AI. Hux was not convinced of the truth of those rumors. No AI could be as casually cruel and falsely magnanimous as Snoke was, the sheer spite and sense of entitlement required for that manner was something that artificial intelligence could not yet emulate.

“Yes,” she said, smiling faintly, “Why else do you think I’m here?” _Oh, I know exactly why you’re here with me, my friend and lover,_ Hux thought. _You’re here to make sure that I won’t kill Snoke before he even notices me in the room._ Few people could get in Hux’s way once he had chosen his target, not with his wired reflexes and artificial musculature but he would not be shocked if Phasma happened to be one of them. 

“I thought you were here solely for the pleasure of my company,” Hux said archly instead, while he nursed thoughts of murdering his erstwhile employer. It would be so easy to just extend the six-inch blades built into his forearms, pop them out between his middle and ring fingers. Snoke had spared no expense on those talons; they had been machined from high-carbon steel finished with a matte black, rust-resistant titanium nitride coating. The idea of returning them to Snoke by lodging them in his skull was highly appealing, at least until Hux followed his thoughts to their logical end. _Phasma will have to kill me, if I don’t have to kill her to get her out of the way, and what will happen to Ren afterwards?_ As much as he hated to admit it, F.O.E was currently the only entity he knew of capable of housing and keeping a psion of Ren’s scale, at least without also driving him irrevocably insane.

His pulse began to race, as he heard Snoke’s voice rumble unbidden in his head. _It is fortunate that I do have an offer to make you, Mr. Hux. One that will allow you to pay off the debt accrued for your many necessary medical treatments. It would so be very unfortunate for you if we were forced to - repossess._ It brought back memories of his rebuilding, of the bed of pain where he had lain in between surgeries. Dead meat and transected nerves, sutures, staples and debridements. The fever and smell of disinfectant as his body tried to heal around the skeletal reinforcements, his very bones _itching_ as they knit around titanium and carbon nanotube struts. Drainage tubes, blood, pus and piss dripping quietly into collection bottles, and him helpless, not even a complete torso after the multiple violations of the minigun and the surgeon’s knife. They hadn’t even let him keep his good right arm. 

Hux bit down on his lower lip as he fought his treacherous mind, took a long, calming breath against the traumatic flashback. Another notification blinked off in his augmented vision, ghostlike. _Resting pulse rate: 140 bpm, cortisol levels elevated. Dispensing anxiety medication._

“Oh, if only I had the time,” Phasma said softly, almost lasciviously, the pink tip of her tongue lingering lightly upon her lip. “No. I was instructed to bring you to a private installation where he’s waiting. The location involved is unlisted and does not possess autoflight beacons for the obvious security reasons.” She kept her gaze on the screen-projected HUD and her instrument panel, but it was as though she had turned to look him in the eye and begun stripping him mentally. That intimate moment soothed him oddly, reminded him that she at least saw him as more than just a piece of machinery. Hux knew that she had noticed his unease and had done this to comfort and distract him, and he was at once grateful for it and paranoid about _why_ she had done so.

A cool detached numbness began to lap at the edges of Hux’s consciousness as his built-in medication pump began infusing a dose of anti-anxiolytic into his bloodstream. “Understandable. I don’t seem to be dressed formally enough for the occasion, though,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. At least his prosthetic hands no longer shook involuntarily when he was stressed or upset; it was a lot easier to hide unease and fear in his present body.

“I think he’ll understand,” Phasma said soothingly. “You weren’t hired to be a clothes-horse, dapper as you are.” _No,_ Hux thought, _I didn’t even dress like this before. The wardrobe came with the position to ensure that I look more like a high-level executive than the killing machine that I actually am._

“I forgot to mention,” Hux said after a beat, trying to change the subject before he upset himself more, “Ren would love to come over for dinner tomorrow. I’ll be bringing drinks as requested. Would you like me to bring something for dessert?” 

“Oh, very good.” She turned briefly from the flight controls, smiled more warmly this time. “I’d say pick something that you and Ren like, since you’re going to eat most of it anyway.” 

Hux sighed softly as the drugs continued to kick in, the muscles in the back of his neck loosening minutely. They hurt, Hux realized, with tension, and he also realized that he had not noticed the pain creeping quietly up on him until it had gone away. “Ren told me pretty much the same thing, earlier today.”

Phasma chuckled, softly and easily. “We’re here to keep you honest and humble, Armitage Hux.” 

Something ached in Hux’s chest as he wondered again if Phasma was only comforting him because she had instructions to do so. He told himself that it would not invalidate their friendship if that was the case. After all, did he not love Ren despite his position as handler? The thought did not comfort him as he had expected it to. A sick feeling began to spread across his gut under the numbness of the medication. How could he be sure that Ren didn’t just love him out of Stockholm syndrome? Part of Hux’s responsibilities as handler meant being the kinder, softer face of the corporation, like padding underneath a shackle, so Ren wouldn’t chafe under its weight. 

The VTOL was currently above Lake Michigan, and Hux glanced leftward to Phasma as they began to descend towards its surface. “Michigan Station,” Phasma said over her headset, “This is Security November Foxtrot Two requiring permission to land.” She was calm, bored, almost, as she punched a single button on her flight console, which reassured Hux that she wasn’t about to kill the both of them by crashing the VTOL into the lake. 

“Security November Foxtrot Two, this is Michigan Station. Transponder signal received and confirmed.” a synthetic-sounding female voice said. “Please maintain current altitude while landing tunnel deploys.” 

“Security November Foxtrot Two maintaining current altitude,” Phasma said. The waters beneath them began to foam, waves slapping white and blue against the lake surface as something immense broke out of its depths. It looked nothing more like a square of metal and nanocrete rising above the lake’s surface in a single massive, ponderous lurch, and appeared to be no more than six feet squared from Hux’s point of view, far above the lake. 

A crooked black line appeared in the middle of the square, splitting it horizontally, and then began to widen. Hux blinked once, a second time, and then the optical illusion began to resolve itself. The top of the square was a massive airlock, the black line the gap between the pressure doors as they retracted themselves to open. 

“Security November Foxtrot Two,” the synthetic voice said, “The landing tunnel has now deployed. Permission to land granted. Please descend to the flight deck for landing.”

“This is Security November Foxtrot Two, thank you, Chicago Station. Descending to flight deck for landing.” The VTOL descended to the flight deck like a tiny bathyscaphe dropping down a cenote sinkhole, and Hux stared out the window at the stripes of illumination blinking on and off around them to guide Phasma safely on her way. The airlock rolled slowly shut above them, eclipsing the sleet and the gray sky, the thin sunlight as they vanished into this artificial half-lit gullet.

“That’s… certainly an impressive entrance,” Hux murmured over to Phasma as she flew the VTOL lightly and smoothly into a floodlit nanocrete-walled cavern. The flight deck was not very large, all things told. There was space for four, maybe six civilian-model VTOLs to land if the pilots were very, very careful. Such a space would have been easy to level and pave over out on the surface. But they were under the cold waters of a lake, with all the weight and pressure that entailed. Hux was no architect, but he knew enough to guess at the sheer labor and cost involved in the construction of this facility. 

_Practical for a man who has a hundred thousand enemies,_ Hux thought, _private, impenetrable, isolated enough for all kinds of dirty business and illegal experimentation, and built conveniently under a lake so cold and so vast that it rarely gives up its dead._

The air was cool and damp, humid and clammy as Hux unfastened his seatbelt and climbed out the open door of the VTOL to step onto the nanocrete deck, and he was suddenly very glad of the merino wool sweater he had pulled over his slub cotton dress shirt when he had dressed to leave the penthouse. A waistcoat added some warmth, definitely, but the wool sweater was better at retaining body heat especially when wet. 

Phasma came around the nose of the VTOL as Hux shut the door. “This way,” she told him, all business now as she led the way towards a single steel door dwarfed by the wall it was set in. Hux’s enhanced vision found and tagged the turret ports marked into the walls, and he could feel the skin over his spine prickling as he felt their camera gazes passing over him. _They’re all live,_ he realized. The many turrets in the wall, the calm synthetic voice, that all led Hux to suspect that an AI ran this installation instead of a human staff. 

_So he doesn’t have to worry about enemies compromising flawed agents,_ Hux mused as he stepped through the door just after Phasma did, _but an AI system can be crippled if someone exploits its access codes. Surely this installation is wired to the greater corporate network - how else would Snoke speak to me via hologram while I’m in the CDMA?_ The old rumors of Snoke being a hostile AI seemed less outrageous to him now. 

The hallway they found themselves walking down was a sharp contrast to the bare nanocrete of the flight deck. The security cameras and turrets were better hidden, the walls plastered and painted with angular Art Deco details. The plush carpet was soft and springy under the heels of Hux’s boots, and looked as though it had been freshly installed. The air had been scented, he realized, with a faint hint of grass and vetiver, the ozone tang of a recent rainstorm. 

Hux had thought his penthouse quarters opulent, with its real hardwood floors and greenhouse garden. This was on a whole other level. A pair of carved wooden doors swung open automatically at the end of the hallway to reveal a private suite, all lacquered inlaid wood, gilt and glass, real leather armchairs. Long crimson drapes hung open to reveal faux windows displaying an impossible vista of old Paris. The lights overhead were set beneath a vast stained-glass dome, and opalescent glass lamps lit the room with a soft, warm light. 

“This is the drawing room,” Phasma said as she preceded Hux into the suite. “Mr. Snoke does his business in the study to the left.” She rapped once on another carved wooden door and waited a few seconds, until she heard the _click-CHUNK_ of the lock disengaging. She then grasped the cast bronze doorknob and twisted it, held it open for Hux as he stepped into the sanctum sanctorum. 

Hux knew in theory what to expect. Snoke had always shown him the same face in all their interactions - that of an immaculately-dressed middle-aged man, his face severely scarred under a black leather eyepatch. That was the ultimate sign of wealth and privilege, where Snoke could afford to leave his injuries unrepaired because he was wealthy and powerful enough to no longer care about whether his looks left a good impression upon others. The door clicked shut behind Hux as Phasma stepped into the room behind him, and now he was trapped in this room with the person he feared and hated more than any other, more than his father, even.

“Mr. Hux,” Snoke said, his voice deep and so very cold, a midwinter voice that sounded of starvation and hypothermia. He did not rise from his chair, as was his right. Instead he beckoned both Hux and Phasma to the great mahogany desk he sat behind. “Miss Phasma. Please, be seated.” Hux knew Phasma preferred to be called Ms., and felt the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle coldly as he began to appreciate what Snoke was going to do to them in this meeting. 

Phasma took one of comfortable chairs before the desk. Hux took the other, his knees bending smoothly beneath him as though he were watching the world from a room behind his eyes, his body moving and acting on its own. Snoke’s skin was oddly and distinctively translucent this close, an unmistakable tell of nano-scale treatments designed to re-lengthen his teleomeres and keep him eternally youthful. Only the wrinkling at his knuckles suggested his true age, a trait that even the best surgeons and the most rarefied regimens could not erase, and the main reason why gloves had returned to fashion in the highest echelons of society.

“Would either of you like coffee? A snack, perhaps? I’m fully aware of your increased caloric needs, Mr. Hux.” Snoke gave him no chance to reply or refuse. He pushed down on the button of an ancient-looking intercom and spoke into the elaborate grille. “Coffee and sandwiches, Nora, if you please. Black for myself and Ms. Phasma, and cream with two sugars for Mr. Hux.” Hux saw Phasma stiffen subtly at the mention of the name, but did not know why.

Snoke released the button and looked at Hux, his remaining eye an icy blue, the same color Hux’s organic eyes had been so long ago, and the gaze provoked a dull, unreasonable anger in the pit of Hux’s belly, a sharp lurch of adrenaline. “Just so you know, Mr. Hux, I am a very cautious man,” Snoke continued casually as though remarking on the weather. “I would not have arranged to meet you in person if I hadn’t already arranged for my own safety. Most of your augmentations were disabled remotely the moment you stepped into my drawing room. I’ve left you control over your own limbs, but at present you are no stronger or faster than the average man, which will make acting on your anger a very unwise decision. Do you understand?” 

“Yes,” Hux breathed, forcing himself to take long, deep breaths so he could tamp the rage down. _This will do me no good,_ he made himself think, chose to remember the birds on the greenhouse roof that morning instead. Black wings fluttering in the air, utterly free. 

“Excellent,” said Snoke, a funereal smile spreading across his ruined face. “Now that we understand each other - Ah. Nora, thank you.” A tall, slim woman had come into the room bearing a tray in white-gloved hands. She was wore a modest, severe black dress and a spotless white apron, and her dark blue eyes were empty and soft, unfocused. It was not the blankness in her eyes that struck Hux as much as her face, which was identical to Phasma’s. Her soft blonde hair was exactly the same color as Phasma’s too, but worn long and pulled back in a tight, no-nonsense bun. 

Hux glanced away from her as she placed the tray down on Snoke’s massive desk, looked instead at Phasma, who kept her expression studiously neutral. Hux could see the tension in building in her spine, however, the minute tightening of her facial muscles as she watched her doppelganger silently. 

“Don’t be so alarmed, Mr. Hux,” Snoke said. “This is Nora, one of my attendants. I like to keep a few of the N-series girls thawed to take care of my needs.” Snoke did not specify further, but Hux had a very good idea of the needs Snoke’s attendants were supposed to tend.

“They’re clones?” Hux asked him, with another cautious glance at Phasma, whose knuckles had begun to turn white as she clenched her fingers into fists. _How can she bear it? I would have wrung his scrawny neck for this - and I would now if she asked me to._ But Phasma kept her face blank and still over the rage taut in every line of her body, and Hux would never presume to act on her behalf. That would only undermine the little agency that Snoke let her have, Hux realized, and he liked her far too much to undercut her.

“Oh, no, that would be far too slow and inefficient, and what would I do with the resulting infants?” Snoke shrugged. “No, Nora and the others are closer to her twin sisters, really. They were all bioprinted from the same genetic stock and blueprints I had commissioned for our dear Natalia here. I let my facilities AI run them remotely, it’s all very neat and clean. Thank you, Nora, you may leave us now.” Snoke dismissed Phasma’s “twin” with a casual wave of his hand before he picked his coffee cup up and raised an eyebrow, clearly expecting both Hux and Phasma to eat and drink as though his previous display had not occurred at all. 

Hux picked up his cup but did not drink from it, only let the warmth of the beverage bleed through the beverage into the fine leather of his gloves, and from there into the sensors in his hands. He watched Phasma sip a scalding mouthful of coffee, swallow against it as though the pain centered her. _I know how that feels,_ Hux thought, struggled to keep his hands still around his cup. The coffee was still quite hot - he would still be able to inflict a significant amount of pain if he splashed it into Snoke’s smug face. 

“On to business, then,” Snoke said briskly as he put his cup back down in its saucer with a tiny _clink._ “I trust that you at least, Mr. Hux, have completely recovered from your last mission in Tuscany.” 

“Yes, sir.” Hux said evenly and neutrally. He began to revert to his hated father’s accent, let each clipped, cut-glass syllable do the work for him. “I’m afraid that Kylo Ren will require at least today off before he’s also ready for debriefing.” 

“As is usual,” Snoke sighed, ignoring the minute slight. And why couldn’t he? He could act with impunity in this meeting, and he knew that Hux and Phasma also knew that. “It’s a pity, the toll his gifts take on him, the poor lad. How would you evaluate his performance on this mission?”

“I -” Hux hesitated briefly, unsure as to whether he was being lured into a conversational trap. “It’s all in my report, sir.” The RP in his accent wavered a little, gave way to his mother’s Estuary English before he regained control again.

A hint of steel flashed behind the false cheer in Snoke’s gaze. “I did not have you brought here to my private offices to read your report, Mr. Hux,” he said, “I would like you to tell me as truthfully as you can how well Kylo Ren did over those three days.”

“He’s improved significantly since the beginning of this year, both in focus and sensitivity alone,” Hux tried to keep his manner brisk, professional, leaned heavily on his boarding school and military academy stoicism. “Nevertheless the sheer population mass in Florence made it difficult for Ren to pick out our target without additional boosters.” He could feel a tension headache building behind his eyes, the ache and throb pounding quietly between his ears.

“But he performed in the end.” Snoke leaned back in his padded leather chair and scrawled a note down upon a sheet of paper, glanced back up at Hux afterwards. 

“Quite well, actually,” Hux said, which was the truth, albeit one that he preferred not to tell. He had been privately proud of how well Ren had adjusted to increasingly difficult assignments, but also secretly terrified that Snoke would then push Ren further and further, until he broke under the strain. 

“Good,” Snoke said, clearly pleased and satisfied. “I had chosen this specific mission as a kind of challenge, you see. To test Ren’s finesse and control, as well as your management of him. You see, Miss Gianna Paoli has been a thorn in my side for some time now. She is, as you now know, a psion who was also trained as a wetworker. Oh, of course she’s nowhere as powerful as my dear Ren is, but her relative weakness also makes her difficult to track down in a highly populated area, and what she lacks in power she more than makes up for with skill.” He jotted another note down - how wasteful and perverse, Hux thought, to use a fountain pen and cotton-rag paper for hardcopy documents that would have to be digitized anyway. 

“So this was a test?” Hux asked Snoke, careful not to let any of his anger and frustration creep around the edges of his faux neutrality. Ren had been so ragged near the end, doubled over with his hands on his knees, retching dryly as the psi-amplifiers took their toll upon him. _You hateful, falsely avuncular condescending tosser._

“Yes. How would you say Ren performed, combat-wise, during this assignment?” A strange question, that, when Ren had been kept away from combat training all these years so as to reduce his exposure to weapons that he could hurt himself with.

“As well as I can expect anyone to be,” Hux said with a shrug and a faintly humorless smile as his rage mingled with a certain cold satisfaction, “when they are caught between a trained wetworker and a highly augmented combat cyborg.” Neither emotion nullified the other, only mixed uneasily in the space behind his heart like a broken emulsion.

“He did not panic, though?” Snoke pressed further.

“No,” Hux said. “Ren remained calm and steady, and he remained behind cover as he had been instructed to, while I subdued Gianna Paoli.” Paoli had fought hard and well, but her hand razors and flechette pistol were completely inadequate to harm an opponent as skilled and as augmented as Hux had been. He had simply sprung upon her, both claws extended, as a falcon dove for prey.

“Excellent. So many psions, especially the powerful ones, are a little - shall we say, impulsive? It can’t be helped, of course, not when they’re capable of sensing the pain and fear of every combatant on the field. But I have worked long and hard to train some discipline into Ren.” _Like bloody hell you have,_ Hux thought but did not say. 

“And of course,” Snoke continued, “you had quite a bit to contribute in that area. Ren would not mutely obey anyone he didn’t trust utterly, and he trusts you. I do not withhold credit where credit is due.” Snoke’s praise only made Hux feel profoundly dirty and soiled, added a bitter edge of cynicism to the complicated tangle of thoughts that came to mind whenever he thought of Kylo Ren. Hux shoved those thoughts away and tried not to think about them. _Freeze them. Put them aside. Don’t let him use your love to hurt you, he has enough of a grip upon your soul, don’t give him more leverage than he already has._

“I requested your presence, Mr. Hux, because I had thought to reward Ren for his consistent performance over the past year, and you would be best placed to bring his reward to him, being his handler.” Snoke thumbed again at the intercom. “Nancy, my dear, please bring me the package from R&D.” He lifted his hand from the button, and gazed steadily at Hux and Phasma. “You really should try those sandwiches, they’re very good. The N-series girls are all quite capable at various extracurricular pursuits, as you already know from personal experience, Mr. Hux.” Snoke’s cold stare pinned Hux to his chair, and he could only be grateful that his prostheses could not betray the anger and tension he felt in this moment, at Snoke’s false affability and the constant disregard for their - Ren, Hux and Phasma’s - collective humanity.

Another one of Phasma’s dopplegangers stepped into the study, bearing a study polymer box in her hands. It was broad and wide, not especially tall, matte gray extruded plastic and utterly ordinary, all scuffed corners and blunted edges. It looked tawdry and cheap against the opulence of this study. “Here on the desk beside the sandwiches, my dear,” Snoke told Nancy offhandedly. This “twin” was dressed in a tidy trouser suit, also in severe black. Her blonde hair was cropped into a short, wavy bob that stopped just short of her jawline, and she was very clearly meant to serve as a secretary and personal assistant. 

“Open it, go on,” Snoke told Hux, who put his coffee cup down to lift the box from the desk. The box’s latches were unlocked and they popped easily under the pressure of his thumbs. The lid swung up on its hinges to reveal a hinged ring of metal with a clasp at the end. A bondage collar, or something very similar to one, Hux realized. In any other circumstances he would have assumed this a bad attempt at a practical joke, but Snoke was such a casually cruel man that Hux could imagine him collaring someone non-consensually as a “reward”.

“What is this?” Hux asked at last, after a few beats of silence, knowing that the asking was expected of him.

Snoke nodded approvingly at Hux, as though he were a student who had just memorized his catechism correctly. “It’s a new device out of R&D. This is one of the final-stage prototypes. It’s a psionic limiter collar.” 

“Like Ren’s helmet?” Hux asked again, turning the collar over in his hands. The cross section of the metal ring was smooth, rounded so as not to chafe or scrape against the skin, with a small, sleek switch box built into the front of it where a D-ring would go if this had been intended for bondage and discipline.

“Exactly like that. But the helmet is so heavy and awkward, isn’t it? The dear boy can’t wear that for long periods of time, it’s tiring and dehumanizing.” _And none of this is, you inhuman bastard?_ Hux wanted to ask, but did not. He only gritted his teeth and forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply. 

“This, however,” Snoke continued, “is lightweight and fairly discreet. Ren can wear it for as long as he likes, which means that he no longer has to confine himself to his quarters. That freedom of movement is my gift and reward to him. I do still expect you to remain at his side to ensure his safety, Mr. Hux.”

Hux turned the limiter over in his hands, read the darkened engravings to either side of a locking slider switch built into the collar’s front. _LIVE,_ read the letters to the left. _DEAD,_ read the letters to the right. 

“Its operation is fairly simple, as you can see. Flip the switch to DEAD to turn the limiter on. Flip the switch to LIVE to turn it off. Bring this to Kylo Ren and show him how it works. You even have the perfect occasion to test it tomorrow, when you have dinner with Natalia tomorrow.” 

Hux glanced again to Phasma, who sat with her fingers locked over her empty coffee cup. She showed no sign of surprise that Snoke knew, only a dull, hollow hurt in her eyes that Hux had known and recognized in Ren’s gaze, too. It twisted at Hux’s heart to see his friend suffering so, but he knew better than to act on those feelings, not while Snoke was watching. Snoke would only take that kindness and turn it back upon him, or worse still, upon Phasma, who was already in enough pain. 

“Are these all my instructions, sir?” Hux asked Snoke as coldly as he could as he shut the box back up with a soft _click._

“Yes. Do tell Ren how very proud I am of him. And, if I may be so presumptuous as to add, Mr. Hux - do enjoy your dinner with Natalia tomorrow. White truffles are a princely gift in these sad times.” _I will remember this, Snoke,_ Hux told himself. _I will remember all the things you’ve done, and one day they will come back to haunt you._

Phasma put her empty coffee cup lightly down in its saucer, stared back at Snoke with a cold, intense hatred in her eyes. There was a tiny _tink_ as she dropped her hands back in her lap, and the bone china cup cracked neatly into three pieces, and Hux knew exactly then that she had been thinking of Snoke’s skull in her hands when she had squeezed down hard enough to break the cup, approved of the sentiment.

Snoke returned to his papers and his cup of coffee as though suddenly bored. “You may leave me now, Mr. Hux, Miss Phasma. Nancy will fly you back to the Chicago arcology, since I am very sure that Miss Phasma is presently too tired to pilot well.” 

Hux stood silently up and tucked the box containing the collar under his arm, extended a gloved hand to Phasma, who took it so he could help her out of her chair. She left the room without a backwards glance, but Hux paused in the doorway leading back to the drawing room, and gave Snoke one last, long hate-filled look. _I’m more machine than flesh, and I’ve killed far more people in person than he ever will,_ he thought, _but I’ve managed to retain more of my humanity doing so than he has hiding behind his desk._

Neither of them spoke - Hux, Phasma, her “twin”. They walked silently down the carpeted hallway back into the flight deck. Phasma managed to keep her face neutrally expressionless until she and Hux were both shut away in the passenger compartment of the VTOL. She began to crumble the moment the jet engines began to whine, but flinched away when Hux put a hand lightly upon her shoulder. Hux knew it wasn’t meant for him, not really, but it hurt. 

“No,” she whispered, trembling and barely audible over the rising scream of the jets outside, “No. You musn’t want me now that you know.” She was not crying, not yet, and Hux sensed in that absence of tears a hurt so profound that weeping alone could not assuage it. 

“I know - what?” Hux asked her softly, carefully. “That Snoke’s a terrible example of a human being?” His stomach lurched within him from sheer nerves and hatred, the inertia of takeoff, that nauseous rage that had been pooling within him even before he had arrived at this meeting, but he shoved them aside temporarily. _Triage._

“That I’m not actually a real person. That everything I’ve done with you for the past three years is - a lie, because I was instructed to, and because you thought I was human.” Phasma said, her voice terrifyingly steady despite the rage and pain in her gaze, the shaking in her hands and shoulders. Hux wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her, rock her until she cried the pain out of her system, but he would not reach out to her, not until she told him it was okay to do so. 

“Phas,” Hux told her soothingly, “who am I to judge? I am literally more inorganic than I am organic at this point in my life. I don’t count as human under some definitions and several of those are important legal precedents ruled on by senior courts.” He was aware of a wetness on his face, realized that he was weeping as though he were trying to cry her pain away for her. Hux was not a man who cried easily, but tears held no shame for him, and Phasma’s inability to weep tore at him more than anything else had.

“Well,” Phasma said, after a long wobbly sigh, “I’m not human according to all the laws, not even orbital, where it’s at least legal to make playthings like me and the others. Not that Snoke is foolish enough to break any laws with us, we were all originally imported planetside under a research agreement.” Things clicked into place now, and Hux sighed, long and low as he understood the predicament Phasma was in. It was highly similar to his, except that this was likely all she knew and had known. 

“That’s why you haven’t quit,” he said, cold tears running down his face to drip down his chin, “You can’t.” Phasma probably didn’t even have the option of dying either by suicide or in combat. Snoke would simply thaw out a fresh N-series synthetic and have her take Natalia Phasma’s place. He wondered how many times this had occurred in the past three years, realized that he did not care if she had not been the same Phasma all along - she was Phasma, and they were still Phasma if there had been more than one of her, and that was what mattered. 

She nodded miserably, her eyes still dry. “The moment I quit, I stop being an employee and become an illegal piece of biotech. Contraband subject to confiscation and destruction.” 

“Phas -” Hux began to say, but Phasma cut him off with a chopping movement of her hand.

“Snoke showed you this - he showed you all of them, because he wanted to teach me a lesson. Because I was getting too close to you,” Phasma said. It all made sense to Hux now. She had started associating with him on orders, fucked him on orders, and then had started caring too much in the same way he had become so enmeshed with Ren. “You shouldn’t care for me,” she murmured bitterly, her gaze wild, almost frantic under the pain. “You shouldn’t be my friend.”

Hux thought of a hundred things to say to that, most of them incredibly profane, but chose not to say them at that point. This wasn’t about him or his feelings, not really, and this was not the time. “I would like to hold you now, Phasma,” he said instead as he pushed the armrest between their seats up and out of the way. “Would it be okay if I did it?”

Phasma looked at him, met his gaze. He had not stopped weeping, could not, and wiped absently at his chin with the back of a hand. “Yes,” she said, and then leaned into his cold arms, let her head rest heavily against the unyielding hardness of his shoulder. She was shaking harder, shivering like a leaf in the wind now, and Hux ran his gloved fingers through her hair, whispered soothing inanities as his tears dripped down his face to land cold on her scalp. 

“I don’t care what you are, Phasma,” he told her after he had run out of comforting things to say, “I don’t care even if you’ve been fucking me on orders. I don’t care. Because none of that invalidates who you are and what you’ve done for me. You’ve taken care of me when I was tired and weary. You’ve given me comfort. I refuse to stop being your friend.”

Phasma looked up from his shoulder, her dark blue eyes very bright with tears as she sucked in a long, shaky breath. Then she reached gently up to his chin, pulled him down for a light, tentative kiss. This was the first time she had ever kissed him on the mouth, and her lips were soft and salty, wet from crying as he gave himself over to sensation and heartache. This was not a come-on, Hux knew. This was Phasma trying to say something that she could not articulate, could not say in words alone. He returned the kiss, trying to bridge that gap of silence with touch, with tiny gasps of breath sucked in against her mouth.

“I don’t know if I love you, Hux,” Phasma whispered against his shoulder afterwards as he rubbed soothing circles on her shoulders and back. “I don’t know if I’m even capable of romantic love.” 

“That’s fine,” Hux told her quietly, sadly - not so much at the fact that she did not love him, but rather at how much the admission hurt her. “It won’t ever be a problem for me. Being your friend is more than enough, as long as you’ll let me.” 

“Yes,” she said as she pulled away from his embrace, closed her eyes as she tried to regain her composure. “Armitage. There aren’t any words to describe all my feelings about you still wanting to be my friend. But I’m very glad of it.” She smiled then, a little weakly, and the tremors and shakes had gone.

Hux took both her hands in his, pleased to find that they were now warmer than they had been earlier. “Good,” he said, sighing quietly in relief. “You and I and Ren - we’ll find a way to survive this together. Nobody can take our humanity away from us - not if we refuse to give it up.”

\---

Hux had fifteen minutes to go before his scheduled maintenance appointment, and he used some of that time to escort Phasma back to her apartment. It felt like the right thing to do. 

Phasma hesitated on her doorstep as the door hissed open to admit her. Most of her neighbors were still at work, and they were alone, as alone as they could be in a world that recorded everything they did and said. Hux read that hesitation, understood it completely. Left alone in her apartment, she would pace uneasily, Snoke’s cruelty echoing in her head again and again. 

“Phasma,” he said before she could step over the threshold into her rooms, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now. I know you’re not going to kill or hurt yourself - you’re too tough for that - but it might be easier for you if you had some distraction from just now, at least until you can process things fully.” 

Phasma shook her head once, looking at Hux with an authority that was closer to her usual manner. “You’re not pushing your maintenance back,” she said, “You’re already overdue for it at this point.”

Hux shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking of doing that, no. Ren’s got a team from Medical babysitting him until I get back, but he’d be glad of your company.” He took Phasma’s hand in his, squeezed her fingers gently. “Would you like to go upstairs to our place and stay with him until I return? I have to drop off the collar in any case, it’s not an inconvenience at all. And,” he continued, “I know you can’t get drunk, neither can I, but there’s a mostly full bottle of Glenfiddich in my bedroom if you want a dram, just for the taste of it.”

Phasma’s hand closed down around his, squeezing hard in response to his gesture. The pressure on his fingers would have been bruising if they had been mere flesh and bone, and he applied counter-pressure on hers to remind her that she was going to hurt herself on the steel and carbon of his hand. “Why are you doing this for me?” she asked him as she let go, as though afraid of the answer.

“Because you’ve done this for me more times than I can count,” Hux said, thinking back to last night, the dinner, the comfort of her embrace, her clever conversation, everything. “Friendship’s a two-way process, Phasma. Let me be your friend and take care of you this evening.” 

“Okay,” Phasma sighed, deeply weary. “As long as it won’t be a problem with Ren.” 

Hux shook his head, smiled with genuine contentment. “He likes you, he likes your company,” he said.

“And he isn’t - jealous?” Phasma looked at Hux as a minute vulnerability flashed over her face, raw and naked before she gathered her composure around herself again, like an armored cape or a comfort blanket.

“No,” Hux said gently, “He’s just glad that you’re here to take care of me when I need it.” 

Phasma hugged Hux briefly, leaned heavily against him to catch her breath before she let go of him. “All right,” she said, “Let’s go.”

\--- 

Ren was curled up on the sofa, his favorite wool blanket tucked around his legs and bare feet, when Hux stepped into the open door of the penthouse. He smiled briefly, and then blinked in vague surprise as Phasma followed into the living room, the door hissing shut behind her. 

“Hey, Phasma,” Ren said, looking up from the book he had been reading. He gazed steadily at her with his dark brown eyes, frowned and set up straight. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Hux?” Phasma’s intense distress bled through the neural shielding, Hux knew from his personal experience. Ren could not sense her thoughts per se, but her emotions were to him as real and visible as sunlight slanting across the hardwood floors.

Hux took a deep breath, exhaled on Phasma’s behalf as she stiffened up against Ren’s questioning. “She’s had a very bad day, Ren. Would it be okay if she stayed here with you until I get back from maintenance?”

“Sure.” Ren pulled the bright blanket off his lap, swung his feet off the sofa to the hardwood floor. “Medical’s going to arrive for my checkup soon, but it’s not like they can tell either of you to leave, they don’t have the authority unless it’s a medical emergency. Would you like to sit down, Phasma? I could put something on, Hux downloaded a few documentaries that I haven’t watched yet.”

“What kinds of documentaries?” Phasma asked, her smile weak and faint as she sat down beside Ren, who lifted his tablet and called up a menu, synced it onto the wall monitor.

“Nature documentaries. About birds, mostly,” Ren said, reading down the list, “And something about the strange sex lives of plants.” 

“Strange and kinky,” Phasma said, “Most pollinations count as interspecies threesomes, unless the plant self-pollinates, then it’s just vegetable onanism.” 

Ren laughed at Phasma’s straight-faced description of vegetal debauchery. “So you want to watch that one?” he asked her.

“It sounds as good as any other,” she said, sighing shakily as the stress began to bleed out of her system. 

“Okay. Let me get snacks and some coffee started. And feel free to steal the blanket if you feel cold, it’s more than big enough for two people to share.” Ren was doing his level best to calm Phasma, a sight that drove a sweet spike of joy through Hux’s bitter heart. Ren was emulating his own behavior, Hux knew. This was exactly how he soothed Ren when he was tired and upset. A tiny distraction, the comfort of food and drink, a warm blanket. _I am his only real model for human interaction._

Hux followed Ren to the kitchen and left the polymer box on the counter for later; he would have to go to his appointment soon. “Ren,” he said, glanced up into his face. He was blinking tears away, Hux realized, and had gotten up for coffee so Phasma wouldn’t notice. 

“Someone was very cruel to her today.” Ren whispered under the sounds of the documentary’s opening, an authoritative grandfatherly voice introducing the strange world of botanical reproduction. “I know. And to you, too.” He dropped two pods of coffee concentrate into the fast-brewer, added an additional pod of mocha flavoring. 

Hux sighed. “I will be okay for now. Could you help take care of Phasma for me?”

“Sure,” Ren said. He turned away from the fast brewer to kiss Hux briefly on the lips, and Hux leaned into Ren’s embrace, caught his breath as his suppressed rage and sorrow threatened to well up in his chest again. “What’s in the box?” Ren asked him, carefully avoiding the subject of Hux’s emotions.

“A new piece of hardware for you.” Hux glanced at the nondescript polymer box again. “Snoke’s R&D people have managed to miniaturize the limiter. We’ll test it out when I get back?”

“I won’t be able to wear it on my head if they make it any smaller,” Ren said with a faintly wicked grin, “Not on this one, anyway.” He tapped lightly against his temple, and Hux reached up to push his hair away from his face, caress the side of his neck. 

“I’ll be back in two hours,” Hux said.

Ren nodded, took a step towards the pantry cabinet and opened the door. “We’ll be here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just FYI, Hux's claws aren't as big as Wolverine's, and he only has one on each hand. That's because the force of his strike isn't then distributed through three cutting edges, but rather one. Which makes it even nastier when it hits.
> 
> Also, they're not completely matte black, and they're not "tacticool", the coating really prevents corrosion and helps harden the metal. The cutting edge - about 2mm of the edge is still polished bright and sharp. And if they break he can have the housing removed and replace them with new ones.
> 
> Also, as bonus info for any of you who are knife-nuts, the blades are machined from a proprietary carbon-steel doped with carbon nanotubes and vanadium to replicate the qualities of wootz steel. The coating is more precisely TiCN, not just TiN, hence the matte black look. They're about 3/4 in wide, with an unbeveled Scandinavian grind to retain blade strength due to the narrow blade width. The full blades are actually 9 inches long - the last 3 inches being the tang that is retained internally in Hux's hand/wrist to mitigate breakage from metal fatigue or lateral stresses. 
> 
> They're meant mostly for stabbing, with a chisel tip (like the American tanto variation Cold Steel does), but the cutting edge is sharp enough that shanking and dragging downwards is a great way to disembowel an opponent.
> 
> Lastly, they don't go _snikt_. Their ejection from the housing in Hux's arms is done electromagnetically, and once they're out in his hands a bolt clicks into place to lock them out and prevent them from getting pushed back in due to resistance. So the sound is closer to a _hsss-tk_. Very quiet. Inaudible in anything but complete silence, and muffled by the fact that all these mechanisms are internal.
> 
> Oh, and I want to add, since I forgot to do so earlier: the blades are perforated so that he can eject them incrementally, from a minimum length of 3in to the full 6in. Most of the time he doesn't extrude the blades all the way, because they can be unwieldy that way. You don't need that much length to stab someone fatally in the neck or heart.


	4. Trochilidae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux's physician may have a solution for at least one of his problems. He is left to ponder his options over the evening, and finds that both Ren and Phasma have learned to configure their lives around his.
> 
> \---
> 
> content warning: unsafe sex in a context where the partners involved know each others' seroconversion statuses.

Hux lay naked and restrained in a contraption like a dentist’s chair while the cybertechnicians began to disassemble him. They had strapped him down for his own safety so he wouldn’t fall out and injure himself while his balance was clearly affected by missing a limb or three, but it was hard to fight the memories of his remaking nevertheless. At least this current crew was staffed by calm, professional people who worked to mitigate his distress during the process. They had given him tranquilizers designed to bypass the blocks on his liver, and the panic was distant and far away through a warm, detached haze. 

“You’ve had a lot of wear on your hands lately,” Dr. Aphra said as she checked Hux’s diagnostics readouts on a tablet she held. “We’re going to have to strip them down and replace some of the internals; all those small moving parts, you know. It’s probably going to take a few days of work.” Chelli Aphra was dark-eyed and intense, East Asian in ethnicity. She did not look sufficiently old to require esoteric nanotreatments to preserve her youth - merely minor plastic surgery - which would place her in her fifties or perhaps well-preserved sixties. She kept the gray in her black hair, though, which reinforced the impression of maturity in her seeming agelessness.

“I do need my hands for important reasons,” Hux murmured up at her as she adjusted the blue fleece blanket her staff had tucked over him so as to allow him to retain his dignity and body heat at once. It smelled of disinfectant and Teflon machine lubricant, but he had grown used to those scents and could almost ignore them now. 

“I know,” she said, “We’ve had a spare pair made for you so that we can swap them out during maintenance sessions. We’re also changing out your blades for a fresh set. I don’t know what you do with them, cut through cinder block or something, but that’s _not_ what they were made for.” 

Hux smiled humorlessly and lazily from his chair as he thought of the fight with Gianna Paoli again. Her reflexes and musculature had been enhanced with biotech and at one point during the chase he had been forced to use his talons to anchor himself in position on a car roof after she had run him over with said new and very shiny Ferrari. She had nearly escaped him afterwards by crashing the car into a bollard and deflating her airbag with her hand razors after the impact stunned Hux briefly and knocked him off the car roof, but Ren had tracked her down again, and they had run her down until her reserves of energy were nearly gone.

Hux hated this body so much, but there was always this uneasy exhilaration at what it allowed him to do. At present the resentment and wrongness were both very far away and hard to reach, which let him bask in his memories of the fight. “Any other changes?” he asked.

“I’ll have to plug into your spinal port in a moment, there’s a firmware update for your medication pump, and of course I’ll have to top your meds up while my techs are stripping and checking your arms and legs. It wouldn’t do for you to run out of anti-rejection medications,” Dr. Aphra said. She put her tablet down on a small rolling table that held tools, vials of medication, wrapped sterilizing swabs.

“Thank you,” Hux said drowsily. The drugs were going to his head more than they usually did, but then his medication pump had triggered twice today, and he had some residual medication in his system when they administered the tranquilizers earlier.

Dr. Aphra frowned briefly at a reading on her tablet, lowered her voice to a whisper that only Hux could hear, “If I’m reading this correctly, and I know I am, you’re almost out of anti-anxiolytic.” 

Hux did not answer, just let out a tired sigh over the soft snap of Dr. Aphra pulling on a pair of sterile gloves. 

“Have the flashbacks been getting worse? More frequent?” she asked, a little louder this time, as she made him turn his head and then pushed a sterilized connector into a port in the back of his neck. There was a vague clinging sensation as the connector pin pushed past the self-healing silicone membrane covering the port, and then an electric shiver down his spine that tasted of lightning, a brief zap in his head like a camera flash in the dark. 

“More frequent, yes,” Hux confessed as she adjusted the cord so he could lie comfortably again. His hardware was maintained and reprogrammed with a wired connection for very obvious security reasons - nobody wanted a combat cyborg accessible to any script kiddie who bought the right hacking software and felt like screwing around on wireless networks. Except for Snoke’s safeguards, naturally. 

“And these flashbacks are about stuff covered by your non-disclosure agreement,” Dr. Aphra said. It was not strictly a question as much as a highly accurate guess. She tugged the lower edge of the blanket up to expose the right half of his mechanical pelvis, used a flex-shaft tool with a proprietary head to remove several recessed screws. Those went, one by one, into a steel kidney pan, tinking as they landed. 

Hux nodded drowsily from his chair as Dr. Aphra lifted one of the armor panels off his right hip and pulled out part of his internal medication pump. She popped plastic vials out of it, one, two, three - and dropped them in a waste bin, before pushing three fresh, labelled vials back into the housing. “Most of it, yes.” 

“I’d refer you to an internal psychiatrist and counselor for that, but we don’t currently have anyone cleared for your level of access. I’m going to try something else instead.” Dr. Aphra brought up the system specs of Hux’s enhanced liver on her tablet, scrolled down a long list of medications before she made a note. “I am going to put you on an antidepressant, a basic one to start, that will cover your anxiety. Also your ongoing depression.” 

“Side effects?” Hux asked. Dr. Aphra rose from her wheeled doctor’s chair and snapped off her gloves, stepped over to a large locked cabinet beside a similarly large fridge, also locked. She punched in the access code for the cabinet and pulled out a pair of vials, one plastic and one glass, shut and locked the door again.

“Insomnia, potential agitation, dry mouth,” she said as she resumed her seat, put on a fresh pair of sterile gloves and began to fill the plastic vial from the glass one, using a sterile syringe that she tore out of its wrapper. There’s sometimes a decrease in libido.” 

“That last one wouldn’t apply to me,” Hux sighed. It was odd how easy this was to say. The tranquilizers, he told himself, but he knew that this was probably because Dr. Aphra was his physician and this admission would remain in a clinical context, private and between the two of them.

“Oh come on,” she scoffed as she labeled the last vial, popped it in. “You’re still a sexual being no matter what’s been done to your body, you just express it differently. I want to solve that problem for you, but R&D has been stonewalling me every time I suggest re-innervating your pelvis, and I can’t until they approve it - the nerve hookups just aren’t there in your present build. I could theoretically just bolt on some junk capable of penetrating a partner, it’s not like replacements and implants aren’t a thing at all, but I’m fairly sure the lack of sensation would only distress you further.” 

Hux always appreciated Dr. Aphra’s utter frankness about things that made most other people blush and avert their gazes, and he wondered if it was a doctor thing, if one learned that in medical school. “It’s not as though I haven’t used a harnessed toy on a partner in the past five years, Doctor, so I’m not objecting to you ‘bolting some junk on’.” Her phrasing sounded a little ridiculous in his accent, and he had to fight a brief laugh at that.

“The cyberdysphoria has a real effect on your mental and emotional health, and it pisses me off, because I’m your doctor and it’s my job to advocate for you medically.” Dr. Aphra said as she pushed the vial housing back into Hux’s body until it clicked in place, and then replaced the armor panel and the screws one by one. “I don’t just have an M.D, I also have a Ph.D in cybertechnology and an M.Sc in psychology. I know what I’m talking about.”

“But you’re not opposed to the fact that I’m a mostly-mechanical killing machine,” Hux said, and then immediately regretted it. Dr. Aphra had been nothing but fair and professional to him - she did not deserve his resentment.

“That wasn’t me,” she said easily, wholly unoffended as she scooted her wheeled chair over to the console Hux was plugged into, began reprogramming his medication pump to also administer the antidepressant, “and you know I wasn’t hired by F.O.E until after your conversion. Besides, I’ve a long history of rationalizing the morally dubious aspects of my profession. I worked on the DoD’s Vader project before things went tits up, and no, I still can’t tell you about what I did there. The way I see it, the powerful are going to do what they want, and I can’t stop them, not on my own. So I’ll do what I can to maintain your quality of life while you’re in my care.”

“Which means?” Hux asked, wondering at the determined expression on her face. Dr. Aphra only looked like that when she was about to do something that really annoyed their superiors. Hux wound up spending 8 hours having his spinal reinforcement replaced with updated smart material parts the last time she got that look on her face. The replacement was something Snoke’s previous cybertechnicians had deemed unnecessary before Dr. Aphra’s arrival. Hux had not had a single backache since the procedure, and the paresthesia in his prostheses had vanished shortly after.

“I’m scheduling you for a refitting say -” and she consulted her tablet then, “two weeks from now. I need to consult my engineers in the interim and figure out how to alter your current pelvis to make the installation work, plus I’d like to check back with you on how the antidepressants are doing.” 

Hux blinked. Was that really so easy? “Really,” he said. It was not a question, because he didn’t have the hope to ask.

“Really,” Dr. Aphra said. “You’ve known me for nearly a year now. When have I failed to deliver on my promises? There’s just a small thing I need you to do before your next appointment.” 

“Which would be?” Hux asked her, curious. He hoped it was not a _quid pro quo_ or something like, because he wanted very badly to keep respecting her.

Dr. Aphra raised an eyebrow at him as though reading his thoughts, and smiled wickedly. “I’m going to send you a link to an international purveyor of cocks, and you’re going to have to pick the one you want me to install. Don’t do it during work hours, I’m not responsible for you getting caught looking at penises during your shift.” 

\--- 

It was 7:10PM when Hux found himself at his doorstep again. Maintenance had ended on schedule, but he had stopped on the way back to acquire dinner and several small items for Phasma’s convenience while she remained in his apartment. Ren’s last message to Hux had indicated that she had gone to his bedroom for a nap, but little more. 

Ren’s medical team were waiting for him in the living room when he entered the door. He signed the tablet one of them handed him, certifying that they had left only after custody of Ren had been returned to him, and then let them out of the penthouse. He left the bags containing his purchases on the coffee table, and then went straight to Ren’s bedroom to check on him. 

The lights in Ren’s bedroom had been left dimmed, but Hux’s vision adjusted immediately. Ren was lying on his side and facing the wall with the blanket tucked up to his chest, his breathing calm and slow but not deep enough for sleep. 

“Hello, Ren,” Hux murmured softly as he entered in case Ren were still disoriented from his medications. 

Ren rolled over instantly, blinked his long-lashed eyes and smiled drowsily. “Hux. Maintenance went okay?” 

“It did,” Hux said, leaving the door open as Ren levered his long body upright in bed. The guard rails on the bed were up around the top half of the bed - Ren sometimes had nightmares so intense that he would fall out of bed without them. “How about your checkup?” 

“You know nobody tells me anything afterwards, right? But things were okay,” Ren said, a flicker of resentment appearing, then disappearing on his face, “I’m just feeling a bit wobbly from the meds they gave me.”

“How is Phasma?” Hux asked as he helped Ren tuck the blanket aside, steadied Ren’s arm in his grip as he scooted down in bed to swing his legs over the side. 

Ren hooked the fingers of his left hand into the railing next to him as Hux let go of him, let his other hand rest on the foot of the bed. “She was going to just take a nap on the couch,” he said, “but she was also carrying two guns and a knife, and the medical team got nervous about that, so I suggested she go lie down in your room and lock the doors, since I can’t unlock them myself.” 

That made sense. “Good idea, that.” Hux did not generally carry his sidearms except on missions - why bother, when he was already so lethal unarmed? He kept them under lock and key for Ren’s safety as was mandated by regulations from Medical. He seriously doubted that Ren could actually sneak up and take one of Phasma’s sidearms, or her knife, while she was resting, but it was an edge case, and having her rest in his bedroom had been the sensible thing to do. 

Ren paused to sniff the air, inhaled deeply at the fragrance that wafted slowly in from the dining area through his open door, his nostrils flaring. “Something smells delicious. What is it?” 

“I brought dinner back with me.” Hux said, “A little treat for you, for having your checkup today, and something that might also improve Phasma’s mood.” 

“Mm.” Ren sighed contentedly as Hux began to smooth his unruly hair from his brow, kissed him briefly on the nose. He tipped his face up and pulled Hux down for another soft, lingering kiss, his fingers tangling gently in Hux’s hair. 

“I’m going to check on Phasma,” Hux murmured after they pulled apart for breath. “That’ll leave you a few minutes to use the bathroom, wash your face and finish waking up?” 

“Sure.” Hux stood by, ready in case Ren needed his help getting up with the tranquilizers still in his system, but he found his equilibrium and waved Hux away. 

Hux entered the bathroom, unlocked the door to his bedroom with a wave of his palm, and then stepped in the door as it hissed open to admit him. He let the door shut behind him, relocked it in case Phasma still wanted privacy. She lay in a half-fetal curl on his side of the bed, her face half-buried against a pillow which she had wrapped in one of his fresh shirts. 

The sight of her sleeping with her cheek pressed to the fabric of his shirt twisted sweetly at Hux’s heart. He knew she liked the smell of his cologne, she had told him so several times previously, but this was such a lonely and vulnerable thing to see. She still wore her blouse and was tucked into the sheets, but she looked more naked now than she had taking off her clothes yesterday. Her holsters lay on top of Hux’s sideboard to each side of the shot glasses and the bottle of whisky.

Hux hesitated, his back to the bathroom door, as he pondered how best to wake her from her sleep. In the end he sat on the left side of the bed, half cross-legged with his other foot on the floor, and laid a careful hand on her upper arm. He did not shake her, only closed his gloved hand gently over her bicep until she began to stir. 

“Mmh-” Phasma murmured, yawned against the pillow before she rolled over to look him in the face. The lights were dimmed in his bedroom too, but he knew she saw him in the dark, as her gaze focused on his. “I’m - sorry, Hux. I meant to be up before you -” she turned to look, vaguely embarrassed, at the shirt she had buttoned around the pillow. There was a smudge of her lipstick on it like a fresh bloodstain, but that wasn’t anything the cleaning cabinet couldn’t deal with.

“No, it’s fine,” Hux said, with a brief chuckle in an attempt to deflect and ease her anxiety, “I’m actually kind of flattered. You obviously needed it.” He did not specify whether she needed the nap or the comfort of his shirt, the lingering traces of cologne and the smell of his hair and skin on his pillow and sheets.

“I was exhausted,” Phasma said quietly as she sat slowly up in bed, the sheets falling away from her to rumple softly about her waist and hips. Her hair was tousled from the pillow, and it made him think of the few times he had spent the whole night in her bed, found this oddly symmetrical. She had always fed him breakfast when he did, and now he had bought dinner for her. 

“I brought dinner back. Something nicer than premade heat-and-eat trays, because it’s been a stressful day for all of us,” Hux said with a brittle smile. “I also bought some toiletries for you, if you’d like to stay the night here with us.”

Phasma let out a long breath, more of an exhalation than a sigh, “I can’t say the idea hasn’t crossed my mind, but I don’t want to inconvenience you.” 

Hux shook his head, knowing that she would see the gesture in the dark. “It would not be any trouble at all, I promise.” 

“OK.” Phasma swung her legs out of bed, stood up and crossed to his armchair, where she had left her scarf, trousers and blazer. “Let me get dressed, we’ll have some dinner, and then I’ll figure it out afterwards.” 

“Of course,” Hux brightened the lights slowly, gave her time to adjust as she began to dress and put her shoulder holster back on. “And I want to be clear, this is an offer, not an obligation. You’re free to leave if you want to.”

Phasma laughed softly, shook her head. “Are you trying to use psychology on me so I leave, and then you can have my share of dinner?” 

“No,” Hux tried to say straight-faced, but the effort failed he broke into a spontaneous goofy grin. He could not remember when he had last smiled like this, and the expression felt vaguely foreign, strange on the muscles and skin of his face. “I would never do that.” 

\--- 

Ren was clearing books off the dining table when Hux and Phasma emerged from his bedroom. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, “I read a lot, then I forget where I leave the book so I move on to a new one. I know what a shelf is, really.” 

“Hardcopy?” Phasma asked. “Wouldn’t a tablet be more convenient?” She had left her blazer and scarf draped over the chair in Hux’s bedroom and was carrying her weapons openly by now. Hux glanced silently at Ren, but he didn’t seem to notice. 

“I don’t know. I like paper books. They feel like something real,” Ren said as he started handing books over to Hux, who piled them temporarily on the floor for the time being. They stopped when they had cleared half the table, which was enough room for three. 

Phasma had found the bags Hux had left on the coffee table by then. She checked their contents briefly and brought the two large paper bags containing dinner and addenda. Hux let her place the insulated containers on the table while he collected plates and utensils from the cabinets and drawer. Silicone plates, sporks for three, unbreakable glasses. A half-used roll of paper towels to supplement the thin paper napkins the vendor had dumped in the bottom of the bag with the sauce containers. He heard behind him the crack and fizz of a bottle’s seal being broken, smiled quietly at the familiar, domestic sound.

Ren took the plates from Hux and began to set the table, while Phasma poured sparkling orange juice into the glasses he had brought. He popped the insulated containers open one by one to reveal a whole deboned roast duck, cut neatly into pieces atop a bed of cucumber slices, a large carton of soft, pillowy rice, boneless red-cooked pork sliced thinly, and chunks of crisp-skinned roasted pork belly. 

“Wow,” Ren breathed, inhaling the mixed fragrances, his eyes half-closed. “This looks great. Is that a whole duck?” 

“Yes,” Hux said. He shrugged his coat off and left it hanging on the back of a chair. “I asked them to debone the duck at the restaurant and cut it up so we can all eat it without using knives. It’s a lot for three, but it’s not like leftovers can’t be eaten tomorrow.” 

“Mm. Yummy. Where’d you get all this, Hux?” Phasma began portioning out the rice with one of the sporks, dividing the contents of the carton neatly into thirds. She found the small covered cups of sauce and condiments, set the plum sauce aside and popped the top of the larger one, which was filled with a dark, rich reduction. 

“There’s a Cantonese barbecue restaurant on Promenade B. I had to pass through on the way back from my appointment, and the smell of roasting duck made it impossible to ignore.” Hux hesitated briefly, and then decided to remove his gloves and cufflinks. He pocketed those, scrunched his sweater sleeves above his elbows and then folded his shirt sleeves neatly beneath them to keep them out of the way.

“Noted for the future,” Phasma said with a quiet smile, as she drizzled the dark, sweet-savory sauce all over her plate of rice. She took the chair to Hux’s right, and Ren took the one to his left, and he sat flanked by them. Hux felt a vague satisfaction at the look on Phasma’s face. She was tired still, but that frantic pain in her gaze had faded mostly, and this dinner was doing exactly what he had intended it to do, which was to distract her from her distress until she could process it properly. 

“So,” Phasma asked, glancing at the roast duck and pork belly, and then back up to Hux and Ren, “Who goes first?”

“We’re not very formal here,” Ren said, “so it’s usually everyone for themselves. But you’re our guest, so I guess you get first pick.” 

“Why, thank you, Ren.” Phasma began to pick slices of roast meat and duck up with a pair of disposable chopsticks, piled them on her plate along with several chunks of pork belly. 

Ren stuck to his spork, used in combination with a spoon like a pair of tongs to pick up his selections. Hux pondered grabbing a pair of disposable chopsticks for himself, but they didn’t work so well with the steel and carbon of his hands. In the end he just waited for Ren and Phasma to finish loading their plates up before he made his own selections. He held the spork in a dagger grip, used it to stab viciously at various pieces of meat and slices of cucumber which he supported with his spoon, before laying them atop his plate of rice. 

There wasn’t much conversation of consequence over the first round of dinner. Pausing to talk would mean less time spent eating, a shame when everything was this good. Hux was grazing idly from the containers of duck and red-cooked pork - the pork belly was almost entirely gone, crunchy cracklings and all - when Phasma pushed her plate away with a soft sigh of contentment. “How was your maintenance appointment?” she asked Hux, who paused to take a sip of his orange juice spritzer while he thought. 

Hux found himself unwilling to talk about his impending refitting at present. It wasn’t even because he didn’t trust his present company at table. No, he didn’t want to discuss it because that way it would remain a secret between him and his physician, a private treasure that was wholly his to cosset secretly in his heart, at least for a little time. “Dr. Aphra’s tweaked my medications somewhat,” he said after another swallow of his drink, citrus and fizz lingering on his tongue afterward, “I have a follow-up in two weeks.” 

Ren paused with a slice of cucumber halfway to his mouth, his gaze locking on Phasma’s briefly before he turned to look at Hux. He did not say anything, however, only resumed eating as Hux poured himself a refill of sparkling orange juice. Hux knew what that look meant. Ren had not read his thoughts, could not with the neural shielding, but he had brushed up against the tangled knot of emotion callusing around Hux’s secret, and had decided not to ask about it. 

After dinner Phasma used chopsticks to consolidate the leftovers into one container and put them in the fridge, while Ren put the glasses, plates and utensils in the dishwasher. Hux took up the empty containers, the used napkins and dumped them down the trash chute. Hux then adjourned to the sofa with a half-eaten pint of ice cream, the tub frigid in his cold hands. He wedged himself comfortably on the left side of his seat, pressing his side against the armrest, put his booted feet up on the coffee table heedless of the scuff marks he left on the glass. The contact felt good, the pressure against his skin pleasant and soothing. 

Ren and Phasma came to join him on the sofa, and they glanced quietly at each other before Ren took the right-hand spot on the sofa, which left the middle for Phasma. _Why did he do that?_ Hux wondered, as he ate a spoonful of butterscotch-cinnamon ice cream. There wasn’t any jealousy in either of their faces, just a quiet re-configuration of roles as they fit themselves around him. 

Ren pulled up another documentary, this one about hummingbirds, and Hux was content to just sit there with the two people he cared for most near him. He ate more ice cream and listened to Ren and Phasma talking to each other easily about how vicious hummingbirds were in their territorial disputes. 

“How can something so small and so beautiful be such a shit?” Phasma asked, laughing softly at a pair of male hummingbirds battling over an artificial nectar feeder. “You’d think such pretty creatures would have dispositions to match.” 

“Well,” Ren said shyly, “You and Hux are both really pretty people, and nobody wants to be caught in a dark alleyway with either of you.” Hux laughed quietly at that before he reached silently across Phasma’s lap to offer Ren the quarter-pint of ice cream left in the tub. 

“Is that a compliment, Ren? Because I’m quite flattered, if it is,” Phasma said with a smile. She had relaxed into the sofa, her erect posture softening into an attitude of relative relaxation as the good meal and company exerted their effects on her. 

“No thanks,” Ren said, indicating the ice cream, “I’m full. The Aztec god of war, Huit -” he stumbled on the word, “Huitzilopochtli, was depicted as a hummingbird because they’re so fierce.” 

“May I have some?” Phasma asked Hux quietly, took the tub and grabbed the spoon out of his hand when he nodded, completely unconcerned at having to share utensils with him. 

“Hummingbirds don’t so much sleep as much as go into torpor,” Hux said, remembering a tidbit of trivia he had picked up somewhere. “Their metabolisms are cranked so high that they can’t sustain themselves at night or when there isn’t any food. Their heart rates drop from about a thousand to a hundred when they do that. A hummingbird - ” Hux hesitated then, trying to find a good way to phrase his thought, “ - it puts its life on the line every time it rests. If it hasn’t fed well enough that day, it might never be able to summon the energy reserves to wake back up come the dawn. That’s why they’re so vicious about territory. They have to be just to live.” 

“Nature,” Phasma mused, between spoonfuls of ice cream, “Red in tooth, claw and beak. And yet hummingbirds wouldn’t face such problems if they weren’t so evolutionarily specialized. They evolved to live off nectar, and now it’s the only thing they can do.” 

\---

Ren and Phasma watched two more documentaries in succession, and Hux found himself bringing up the browser in his enhanced vision to look at the site Dr. Aphra had linked him to. He wasn’t sure what to expect - ridiculously veiny dildos of impossible length and girth, perhaps. Appliances molded from the bodies of porn stars. That sex shop feel was not something he would have objected to personally, but he would have found it crass in the context of his upcoming cybernetic reconstruction.

This one was different, however. The page design was minimal, elegant, the various implants on offer helpfully shown in clear, well-lit photographs modelled on an androgynous plastic torso. It struck an odd yet comfortable balance between medical supply house and vendor of more adult entertainments. There were disembodied breasts in every size and shape for reconstruction surgery, sensor-studded nipples to retain the erogenous zone after a mastectomy. An FAQ page showed anonymized “after” pictures of various recipients - a transgender woman whose new bosom had been implanted seamlessly under her skin, someone else who had opted for implant-based reconstruction following cancer surgery, and those images comforted Hux greatly, although he was not entirely sure why. 

The penile and testicular implants were slightly more complicated. One was supposed to match a penile implant to a testicular implant to best suit one’s preferences and desired look, and Hux soon realized that he was having a hard time assessing his options with regards to perspective. It wasn’t as though he had spent a lot of time looking at his wedding tackle straight-on, and he had never been fond of taking photographs of intimate body parts and putting them online for all to see. He couldn’t even use his memories of masturbation for reference - not when he wasn’t even sure if his current hands matched his flesh-and-blood ones in size.

 _Six years is far too long,_ Hux thought as he scrolled through the dizzying array of options. It was easier to think in terms of comparison instead. He thought of the last lover he had taken before that last fatal run. _Sebastian Wong._ Seba had largish hands for his build, his coarse, slippery black hair cropped short and spiky. Those long, graceful fingers folded easily, elegantly around the grip of his SIG P226. The increased width of the double-stacked magazine had never been an issue for him. Hux thought of how his cock looked in Sebastian’s hand, found it easier to settle on an appropriate size range.

Hux had forced himself not to think of Sebastian for the past six years, had pushed those memories back since they had both died amidst the snowfall of a Midwestern blizzard. The problem was, of course, that Hux had come back from the dead, and Seba had not. He wasn’t sure, even now, whether he did love Seba romantically or not, only that they used to joke about doing one last big run and then retiring from the _ronin_ business. 

“I’ll go back to Quebec,” Sebastian had joked once, over a pint, “find a nice cabin to live in, do something horribly and stereotypically Canadian like tapping maple syrup or training beavers to play hockey. _Eh_.” Implicit in that joke was a silent invitation for Hux to join Sebastian in that cabin if he ever felt like it. Hux wasn’t overly fond of beavers or hockey, and he could take or leave maple syrup, but the cabin in the woods had sounded like a nice retirement plan. There were certainly worse places to go.

“Hux?” Phasma was nudging him gently with an elbow. The pint of ice cream sat empty on the coffee table before her. The documentary they had been watching had ended, but the wall monitor was still on, its screen a neutral empty gray. Beside her Ren gazed worriedly at him, and he felt a brief pang of unease.

“Oh - sorry.” Hux said to cover his discomfort, “I was daydreaming.”

“No you were not,” Phasma said with a knowing look on her face, “I know how people look when they’re sneaking looks at sites in their ARglasses during important meetings, and you look exactly like that except without the glasses. Spill.” 

Hux took a long, deep breath and organized his thoughts, banished the browser from his vision to look at her and Ren. They did not look upset, he realize, just a little concerned. Curious about his distraction. “Dr. Aphra’s going to try to - refit me,” he said slowly, carefully. He steadied himself with a breath then, and synchronized the the browser to the screen, revealing the website that he had been looking at. 

“Oh.” Ren breathed in growing comprehension, as he took in the contents of the page, grinned. “That was what you didn’t want to talk about earlier.” 

Hux felt something, not panic, no. Just a sort of vulnerability, a moment of total exposure. “Yes. I have to -” and he took another long breath then, “- choose one I like. That’ll be congruent with my own body image.” 

“That doesn’t seem too hard,” Phasma said. She glanced at the various options on the screen. Hux wasn’t sure, but her gaze seemed fixed on one or two of them, her facial expression coolly curious.

“It would seem so, but you understand I don’t exactly have a good frontal view perspective of my own body. I’m always seeing it from top down, and that is in no way helpful in selecting ... “ He let the sentence trail off, gestured vaguely at the monitor. 

“Right, that makes sense,” Phasma said, patting him gently on the arm. “I’d offer some suggestions, but I don’t think it’s my place to.” The gesture was soothing, comforting as she had intended it to be.

“Yeah, me neither,” Ren said. He stood up and stepped around the coffee table to perch on the left-side armrest. “It’s gonna be your dick, so it has to be your choice.” Hux closed his eyes for a moment as Ren began to stroke his head gently, fingertips threading gently through his short hair to caress his scalp.

“And what if you don’t like what I choose?” Hux asked Ren after he opened his eyes, asked the both of them, really. 

Ren shrugged, but did not stop petting Hux, who tipped his head to the side, to rest his brow against Ren’s flank. “Then I’m just going to have to accept it like I have the rest of you,” he said, “which I have.” 

“Hux.” Phasma said, concern apparent in the way she said his name, “How much function has Dr. Aphra promised you?” Her warm fingers closed over his right hand, her fingertips running lightly and smoothly in small circles over well-worn steel and carbon.

“She’s been clear about the amount of sensation I’ll have, which isn’t much. Hardware limitations, as I understand it.” Hux said. It was getting easier to talk about this now, with the both of them here, flanking him. “I’ll be able to penetrate a partner with it, but it’ll be nice to have even if I do absolutely nothing with it. Just having that weight and presence in my clothing, against my thighs. I don’t know how else to articulate it to you, Phasma.”

Phasma kissed him gently on the brow, her breath still sweet with butterscotch and cinnamon. “Hux, I’m sorry about the times I’ve told you it doesn’t matter to me, because it obviously matters to you. I just never thought about how it would. I’m sorry if I was dismissive.” 

“No, you were trying to reassure me,” Hux said against a yawn, “I understand.” 

“Have you figured out which one you want yet?” Ren asked Hux, before he hunched awkwardly to the side to plant a light kiss on the crown of Hux’s head, where his hair was tousled from Ren’s earlier caresses.

“I’ve got a good idea, yes,” Hux said, and he did, “But I think I might want to sleep on it, first.” 

“You do look exhausted,” Phasma said. She got up from the sofa and extended a hand to him, “and you haven’t had a chance to nap today, like we have.”

“Yeah,” Ren smiled as he slid off the arm of the sofa. “Let’s get you to bed.”

\---

 _It’s nice to be cared for like this,_ Hux thought. He sat at the bottom edge of his bed while Phasma helped him with his boots, let Ren pull off his sweater for him. Normally he would have felt embarrassed, uncomfortable with their attentions, but today had been a long and difficult day. He was aware of a heavy tiredness, if not sleepiness, just a need to lie down and rest and mark time in his head while someone dozed next to him. 

“You’ll take care of him tonight, won’t you?” Phasma asked Ren, after they had both helped Hux undress. Ren had laid him down on his usual side of the bed where Phasma had slept this evening. Hux’s lipstick-marked shirt was still buttoned around his pillow, but he did not care. It now carried, along with the smell of his skin and hair, his cologne, a faint ghost of Phasma’s shampoo and conditioner, a hint of her perfume. 

“Yeah,” Ren said as he pulled the sheets up over Hux, let his warm fingers linger on Hux’s chest, “but where are you going?”

Phasma shrugged as she hung Hux’s clothing up in the cleaning cabinet, smiled softly and sadly. “I was going to head downstairs to my own apartment, so you can stay with him.” She hesitated, looking for Ren’s answer, and Hux saw the naked vulnerability in her face again. _She does not want to be alone,_ he thought, _but she’ll step aside because she doesn’t think this is her place._

“No,” Hux said as he propped himself up on his elbows, “actually I’d like you both to stay. Only if you want to, of course,” he added belatedly. A moment passed. Two, as Ren glanced from his face to Phasma’s and back. 

And then he grinned impossibly, mischievously. “There’s enough room here for you too, Phasma. I should know. I sleep here half the time and I sometimes get lost looking for Hux in the sheets.” 

Phasma nodded. “Only if my guns and knife won’t be a problem,” she said, seriously. 

“They won’t be, I promise not to touch them,” Ren said. He grabbed the hem of his long-sleeved t-shirt and tugged upwards, stepped out of his jeans and left them crumpled on the floor. 

“All right then.” Phasma took off her shoulder holster and left it on Hux’s sideboard, pulled her belt free from her trousers to remove the magazine carriers and hip holster. Those went to the other side of the bottle of whisky with a soft clatter. Ren slid into bed next to Hux, still wearing his boxers, and Hux leaned gratefully into the warmth and solidity of him, the quiet comfort of skin on skin.

Phasma stepped easily out of her trousers, paused to look at Ren. “Do you mind?” she asked him, her fingers on the placket of her blouse.

“No,” Ren said, his eyes lingering on the pale V of skin in her open collar. “Do you?” Hux felt goosebumps rise on the back of his neck, shivering down his spine as he read the sudden erotic charge in those two brief questions. He searched within his chest for the pang of jealousy and found none, only a strange, fluttering excitement building low in his belly. 

“Not at all,” Phasma said. Ren licked his dry lips to wet them as Phasma unbuttoned her blouse and let it slide off her shoulders, breathed once, short and sharp as she unclasped her bra and slid the straps off her shoulders. She was almost luminous in the low light of the bedroom, gleaming like a pearl as she stepped out of her panties to stand completely nude before them. 

_This is a first time for Ren,_ Hux thought, _he’s never had anyone else before._ He wasn’t even sure how far things would go and wasn’t that worried, in any case. He would be content and comforted even if all they did was sleep, just knowing that the two of them liked each other enough to both share a bed with him. 

“Move over,” Phasma whispered to Hux. He rolled partially over to give her the space, and found Ren’s cock pressing hot and hard and eager against his scarred belly, through the thin fabric of his boxers. _Oh. We’re definitely going to do more than just sleep,_ Hux thought. He could only smile and exhale slowly as Phasma lay down next to him, pressed the soft skin of her breasts and belly against his back. 

“Is this okay with you, Hux?” Ren asked, a little breathlessly as he reached across Hux’s flank to brush a cautious hand against Phasma’s shoulder. She made a throaty, purring sound in the back of her throat and pushed herself even harder against Hux, began to kiss him hotly on the back of the neck. 

“Always,” Hux said, gasping between the both of them, held and surrounded by all this hunger and need. “You don’t belong to me, Ren. You don’t have to ask permission to want someone else.” 

“Thank you,” Ren whispered, before he bent his head to the plane of Hux’s chest, let the bump of his nose trace cold down his sternum. Ren’s mouth was hot like Phasma’s, his teeth a cruel tease as he began to nibble slowly and deliberately on Hux’s nipples. Hux arched against Ren’s ministrations, moaned and shivered as Phasma bit gently down at the side of his neck. 

“You make such pretty noises when he does that,” Phasma chuckled softly against Hux’s shoulder as Ren pushed him over onto his back. She took the opportunity to throw the sheets back so that Ren could see everything she was doing, shifted easily to grind herself against the point of Hux’s hip. 

“You’re going to kill me with your generosity,” Hux groaned, was silenced briefly by Ren’s eager mouth, the slick velvety wetness of his lips and tongue, the sharp points of his teeth. 

“Come on,” Phasma panted, her movements slow and sure as Hux tucked his left arm around her waist, “you’re a grown man. You can take it.” He ran his fingers gently down her hip as she rubbed her clit up against him, her vulva soft and slippery against the scarred skin where his belly met his pelvis.

Ren paused to watch Phasma buck slowly and insistently against Hux, his eyes fixed on her half-closed eyes, the wet O of her mouth, the heave of her chest. Her nipples were coral against the paleness of her breasts, and she keened a little when Hux shifted a little and teased one of them with his free hand, rolling it lightly between thumb and forefinger. “I’ve never done this before,” Ren confessed. 

“It’s okay,” Phasma gasped, “I’ll show you.” Hux reached for Ren’s wrist, grabbed it and guided his hand over the soft flesh of her breast, watched the flutter of his eyelids as he cupped her gently in his fingers. 

“Could I hold you while you -” Ren ran out of words, shut his eyes fully as she pushed back and up against his fingers. He let out a long, shaky breath, and Hux could feel him trembling as though he prefigured fever seizures, saw the tremor in his hand.

“I’ve got an even better idea,” Phasma said. She stopped what she was doing and rose up on her knees. “Give me a little room, Hux,” she said, and he obliged while she crawled over him. Phasma slid easily between him and Ren, the soft firm curve of her arse pressed smoothly against Hux’s hips. She drew one of her legs up and wrapped it loosely around Ren’s waist. 

Ren glanced down at Phasma, his eyes almost black with hunger and arousal. He slipped his right hand between her thighs, his careful fingers sliding past the wet pink folds of her vulva to savor the warmth of her. “Not so fast,” Phasma whispered to Ren, “You don’t know what you’re about yet. Show him, Hux,” she continued breathlessly, “show him what I like.” Ren met Hux’s gaze over Phasma’s shoulder, the look exchanged between them crackling like lightning in a dry desert sky. 

Slowly, deliberately Hux snugged himself up against Phasma’s back, letting her rest her head on his right arm. He brushed lightly against the smooth skin of her belly with his left hand, let his cold fingers splay wide over the soft curl of her pubic hair. She gasped as Hux buried his face in the back of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair, her sweat, shampoo and soap and the last traces of jasmine and sandalwood lingering on her skin. He bit gently on the nape of her neck, felt her rock heavily against him as his left hand crept downwards to part her labia gently. 

Hux found Phasma’s clit and began to draw slow, lazy circles over it, and she arched into him with a soft needy cry, her small breasts pushed outward towards Ren, who buried his face in her cleavage, began to kiss his way up her sternum. “That’s right,” Phasma gasped, shuddered briefly against Hux as Ren began to suck on one of her nipples, his plush lips pressed against the creamy paleness of her skin. “That’s how you do it.” She reached out for Ren, pulled his head closer to the curve of her breasts as she tightened her left leg around his waist, ground softly against his belly as Hux quickened his movements, teased her faster and harder. 

Ren lifted his head from Phasma’s cleavage and watched her face, his gaze avid, his hips twitching futilely beneath hers as she got closer to climax. _Fuck,_ Hux thought, could not find the coherence within him to articulate how beautiful Ren was in this moment. A kind of raw wonder flowered in Hux’s chest then, as though a long-dry spring had begun to spill pure, fresh water onto parched ground again. _I’ve never seen Ren like this before._ He was discovering the both of them anew, finding more things to like and love about them in this altered context. 

Phasma was breathing hard and heavily, curled backwards against Hux’s chest when she came with a long, desperate cry. She whimpered softly as Hux continued to stroke her, mercilessly, and then moaned again as she came a second time. Ren bent his head to kiss her on the neck, her exposed throat, the soft curve of her jawline, and she tangled her fingers in his unruly hair, pulled hard when Hux brought her off a third time. “Enough,” she panted afterwards, “enough.” Hux stopped, let his fingers slip from between her thighs. He kissed her slowly and tenderly on the back of her head, and then gasped against her hair when Ren took his right hand and began sucking on his fingertips, licking him clean. 

“I want to fuck you so badly,” Ren murmured when Hux pulled his fingers free from that clever mouth, and Phasma laughed lightly, grasped his broad shoulders to roll him easily onto his back. 

“I can see that,” she said, glancing down to the soaked fabric of Ren’s boxers, still tented awkwardly over his erection. 

“I don’t know if I should. I don’t want to get you pregnant,” Ren gasped as she tugged roughly down at the waistband of his boxers, shuddered at the friction as the elastic caught on his cock. He whined, desperate and overwhelmed when she took hold of his cock to free him from his predicament, thrust up into her grip with a mindless surge of pleasure.

“That’s not a problem,” Phasma told him, “don’t worry.” She didn’t bother pulling Ren’s boxers off him, just left them over his thighs as she took a long, appreciative look at his nakedness. “Hux,” she murmured, “you lucky bastard.” Hux could not help laughing at that, grinned as she settled herself over Ren, straddling his hips.

Ren slowed his breathing with an effort, reached up to caress her narrow waist, the delicate skin of her flank, cupped his fingers around her breast. ”You’re so beautiful,” he murmured reverently as he ran his thumb in a gentle circle around her nipple, watched her shiver in delight.

“So are you,” Phasma said in reply, “the both of you.” She guided Ren’s free hand between her thighs, showed him how to spread her open before she lowered herself onto him. “Just like that,” she told him soothingly as she fed the head of his cock into her cunt, “take your time.” Ren gasped, arched his back to thrust up into her as she began to encompass him. He grasped at her hips, tried to guide her movements, but she refused to let him steer her. 

“Slowly,” she told him, “I want you to savor this.” Hux could not look away, he did not want to, not at the sight of Ren’s head tipped back against the pillow, his neck bared as though for sacrifice, nor at the way Phasma eased herself slowly onto Ren’s thick cock. He thought of how it would have felt if he had been the one riding Ren, sucked in a long shivery breath at the mental image. There was no resentment or disappointment, just a vague nostalgic ache. It was far better to watch them than to imagine what he would have done in either of their places, better to enjoy himself vicariously through them. 

“You’re so tight,” Ren managed to choke after Phasma had taken most of his cock into her. She gasped, shuddered against him, and grinned. 

“It’s only because you’re big,” she replied. She lifted her weight off of him slightly, let him slip out of her a little before she sank back down onto his cock, letting him stretch her open with a little sigh of delight. She did not resist this time when Ren reached up to grasp her hips, let him guide her movements as he thrust helplessly up into her. “Don’t just lie there, Hux,” she panted, mewed softly as Ren began to fuck her in earnest, “come here and hold me while your beautiful boyfriend fucks me.” 

Hux did as he was told. He climbed up from his side of the bed and knelt between Ren’s legs, let Phasma lean into his chest as she rode Ren’s thick cock. It was incredibly delicious to watch Phasma writhing around Ren’s cock, equally exciting to watch Ren shudder up into her. Hux cupped her breasts in his hands, kissed her neck, her shoulders as she fell into rhythm with Ren’s steady thrusts. 

“You’re so good to me, the both of you,” she purred, reaching behind her to steady herself on Hux’s hip, and then she stiffened and keened when Hux slipped his fingers between her thighs again. Her clit stood proud, pushed out of its usual retreat by the girth of Ren’s cock, and he could feel each thrust under his hand, feel Ren pushing her labia out of the way with each surge. 

Hux started to stroke her clit again, very slowly and gently this time. She was sensitive after she had come, and even more so with her cunt crammed so full of cock. Ren pulled her down onto his hips again and again, and Hux could feel him trying to pace himself but failing to. Phasma’s fingernails were scrabbling uselessly at the smooth metal of Hux’s pelvis before she reached down to grab his thigh instead. She was close, so very close that she was trembling with it. Hux grinned at the tiny desperate sounds escaping her throat as Ren fucked her full and hard, kept teasing her clit and her nipples until she came with a long full-body shudder. Ren was close too, very close, his grip hard enough to bruise Phasma’s hips as he surged up and up into the soaked velvet heat of her cunt, that sweet silken tension too much for him as he spent himself in her. 

Hux knew each movement of Ren’s climax intimately well, recognized each long, aching spasm, anticipated that last, trembling thrust as he arched helplessly against her, the soft, contented sigh he let out as he sank back into the mattress. Hux kept holding Phasma against his chest as she sagged softly against him, fucked-out and exhausted, her eyes bright in the flush of her face. “How was it, for you?” she asked Hux very quietly, a faint concern flickering into her gaze as he laid her back down on the bed. 

“I enjoyed it immensely,” Hux said, and meant it. Phasma huffed softly, a tired laugh, and then gasped softly in surprise as he propped her long legs up on his shoulders. “I’ll be gentle, I promise,” Hux told her, watched her reach out for Ren’s hand as he bent his face to the heat and wetness of her. The mattress shifted softly as Ren saw what Hux was doing, and it was his turn to hold Phasma now while Hux had his way with her. 

Phasma’s inner thighs were slick with her juices and with Ren’s spunk, and Hux savored the salty-sweet scent of her mingling with the faint chlorine tang of Ren’s seed. He lapped softly and gently against her labia, still blood-dark from arousal, breathed briefly against the hood of her clit. She shivered and whimpered in response, and Hux could hear Ren saying something in a soothing whisper as she tensed up against his mouth. 

“Keep holding me, _please,_ ” she gasped, her voice slightly muffled, and Hux knew from the sound of it that she had buried her face against Ren’s shoulder as he cradled her in his arms, let her pull at his hair while Hux resumed his attentions. He closed his eyes and slipped his tongue into her cunt, teased her very gently as he tongue-fucked her, flickering in and out of her as he licked eagerly at the come still dripping out of her. This tasting of her, of Ren, was intoxicating, incredibly arousing, and he lost himself in the texture of her, the scent of her well-fucked cunt, the feel of her tensing desperately and uselessly around his slippery tongue. 

It did not take Hux long to lick Phasma clean, not when she was so open to him. He slipped two fingers into her, softly and gently as he began to nuzzle very lightly against her clitoris. He did not lap at her, only let her grind back up against the softness of his mouth, the velvet of his tongue. Ren was murmuring to her again, talking her through her next orgasm while her breath came in sharp, hungry little pants. Hux let her find her own rhythm against him, and then fell into step with her, teasing her ever so lightly with the pointed tip of his tongue. She was so tight around his fingers now, clenching like she did when she was close to climax, and he pushed her softly, so softly over the edge with a light curl of his fingers and the slippery friction of his mouth.

Phasma did not cry out or moan this time, only shivered silently against him as though seizing from a long fever. He stopped and let his fingers slide out of her cunt, kissed his way back up her belly, let his mouth linger hotly against the soft creases under her breasts. She shook against Ren, against Hux’s mouth as he covered her sternum with more kisses, nibbled gently at her collarbones before he settled behind her, let her lean into him as her teeth chattered softly. 

“It’s okay,” Hux whispered in her ear as she came down from the intensity of her last orgasm, “I’m here. We’re both here.” He listened to her breathing as she calmed, glanced over her shoulder at Ren, who pressed his lips against her brow. 

“My God,” Phasma moaned softly, after she caught her breath again. “I think I’m going to have to call in sick tomorrow, because you’ve both fucked me so hard that I can’t feel my legs.” Ren laughed a little at that, too tired and fucked-out himself to fully appreciate the joke. 

“It’s all right,” Hux told her, told him, “you both have the rest of the night to recover, I promise.”

“Damn your lack of a refractory period, Armitage Hux,” Phasma sighed heatlessly as she shut her eyes, let him pull the sheets back over her before she settled back down with her shoulders against Ren’s broad chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers, you might be interested in knowing that I had actually picked Galen Erso as Hux's physician initially, but I realized shortly after, that I could not actually imagine him saying "an international purveyor of cocks". 
> 
> So I used Dr. Aphra instead. 
> 
> Galen'll show up at some later later later point.


	5. Omissions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren is granted a taste of freedom, but some things come with too high a price. This is something Hux cannot shield him from, as much as he wants to. This is something Ren has to face, himself.
> 
> \--- 
> 
> Content warning: Allusions to non-specific abuse of minors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter's overdue, but I had paid writing to do, a writer's workshop, and a costume to finish for a convention. Enjoy!

A heavy snow was falling outside the arcology complex, building up on its domes and then sliding off, the product of an unexpected but not unwelcome cold snap. It wasn’t as though the inhabitants of the Chicago arcoplex ever had to worry about inclement weather in the first place. The entire complex was self-contained, with its own parks and gardens, and an artificial forest populated with synthetic animals. No, Armitage Hux wouldn’t suffer from this snow, not more than usual, in any case. Not in here, nor in the Detroit arcoplex, which was mostly underground. 

People who lived outside corporate boundaries were the ones vulnerable to frostbite and hypothermia and the ever-present effects of acid rain. They served no corporate master, suffered little to no surveillance. In exchange they were free to starve, to die from exposure, and to pay the protection fees of petty little gangs that mimicked in smaller scale the depredations of CEOs such as Snoke. It wasn’t that hard a life if people banded together to aid and defend each other, though. Hux had spent the early years of his life living in such a place and he had returned to it, going _ronin_ on his release from prison nearly ten years ago. 

Hux continued to stare out the windows at the snow swirling past his penthouse quarters. The strong scent of Ren’s soap hung in air humid from the shower, this time tinged with the honeysuckle of Phasma’s own body wash, a mingling of smells that soothed Hux’s ever-alert, ticking mind. He had already put three pods of coffee in the fast-brewer, and its rich brown aroma began to compete ever so faintly with the artificial perfumes of soap as it wafted in from the kitchen area. 

The water continued drumming on the floor of the shower cubicle, and then cut off abruptly, and Hux picked the spare towel off his bed and stepped in, handed it to Phasma as she emerged, dripping like a naiad. “Thank you.” She grinned as a stray droplet of water rolled down her nose to linger briefly upon its tip, and then buried her face in the towel as she began to dry off. There was a brief pattering behind her as Ren reached up to wring his hair dry, and then he edged past her to grab for his own towel hanging off the heated rack. 

“I’ve started coffee,” Hux told her, told the both of them really, “and had my first breakfast, but I’m not sure what you want, either of you.” 

“We were gonna test the limiter last night,” Ren said, his voice muffled behind his towel as he worked on his hair, “but we got, uh, busy.” Hux knew that Ren was grinning slyly beneath the towel, smiled in response. 

“It might be a good idea to wait until we’ve tested it,” Hux said as Ren let the towel drop from his face to hang loosely around his shoulders like a cowl.

“I don’t think I’m going to be sick if it doesn’t work, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Ren shrugged. He grabbed his hairbrush and ran it through his wet hair slowly and carefully, untangling it as he went, frowning at his reflection in the mirror when the bristles caught on a snarl.

“No.” Hux said, “I was thinking that - that we could go out for breakfast if it works properly.” 

Ren put his hairbrush down on the countertop, paused to look Hux’s reflection in the eyes. “Am I allowed to do that?” he asked, reversed and not-reversed, a strange forlorn excitement in his gaze. Hux looked back at his own hated reflection, at the pupiless eyes that were not his, and chose instead to look at Ren’s, at that narrow jaw and sensual mouth and those dark-dark eyes. 

“As long as I remain with you, yes. What do you think, Phasma?” Hux asked through the bathroom door. Phasma was half-dressed in her blouse and shoulder holster, but she had also put her ARglasses on and was sitting in Hux’s armchair, staring vacantly into the middle distance with her trousers draped over her knees.

“Sorry, I didn’t get that,” she said after a few seconds’ silence, blinking hard to refocus her gaze upon him. “I was busy drafting my ‘not-feeling-well’ mail.” 

“Calling in sick after all?” Hux asked as he turned to the doorway to face her. Ren’s electric razor buzzed behind him, echoing tinny off the tiled walls. 

“Yeah,” Phasma said. Hux expected a mischievous smile at that, a little hint of defiance, but she only looked sad and tired. He didn’t expect last evening’s diversions to soothe her entirely. A hurt like hers would linger for a few days at least, until she had processed it completely.

“I was thinking of going out for breakfast if Ren’s new limiter works as planned,” Hux said, repeating himself to clue her in on his conversation with Ren.

“Any ideas as to where?” Phasma asked. Her gaze drifted away from him again, and he could see from the movements of her pupils that she was still working on her excuse for not coming to work.

“I was hoping you’d have some advice.” Hux shrugged, glanced over his shoulder to see that Ren had exited the bathroom. Getting dressed, then. “I don’t generally eat out unless work calls for it.” 

“I won’t be coming with you today,” Phasma said. “I need to go home and take some alone time to decompress. Dinner is still on this evening, and you’re both still welcome.” 

“Understood.” Hux sensed that this conversation was over, at least for the time being. He turned away from her to walk back through the bathroom into Ren’s room, found him pulling a red t-shirt over his head. His jeans hung precariously on his skinny hips, and Hux felt a brief pang at how fragile he looked. Ren was tall, broad-shouldered, but a life spent mostly in laboratories and the opulent prison of their shared penthouse had left him with few options for exercise. That and his fickle appetite left him underweight for his height and build, and thinness did not become him. 

Ren’s head emerged out of the collar of his t-shirt, and he ran one of his large hands across the nape of his neck to pull his wet hair free. Drops of moisture had already darkened the thin fabric of the t-shirt, at the back of his neck and the juncture where neck met shoulder. His dark eyes were just a little too wide, his otherwise neutral expression out of place when his chest was rising and falling too fast for him to be wholly at rest. 

“It’s okay,” Hux said. He took a step closer to Ren, and then another, and took Ren’s hand in his own, squeezed his fingers lightly. 

“I want to be excited,” Ren said, frowning slightly, “but it also scares me? I mean -” There was a hitch in each breath, a panicky gasp with each intake of air that told Hux that Ren was about to have an anxiety attack.

“Slow breathing, Ren. Close your eyes for a moment.” Hux watched as Ren tipped his chin up and closed his eyes, let his head hang more loosely as his shoulders relaxed. “Okay,” Hux murmured to him, ran gloved fingers through his damp hair to massage at his scalp, “just be. Are you there?”

Ren’s face slackened, the tension in his brows unknotting slowly as he registered Hux’s touch and voice and the closeness of him. “Yeah,” he said. 

“Good,” Hux breathed, “I’m with you now. Can you untangle the fear and the excitement? They’re two very different things. They just feel alike at the beginning because it makes your heart beat faster, you breathe a little shallower. You’re anticipating in both cases. But excitement is for the good things, like breakfast together, and a walk in the park. We’re going to do that.” He let his hands slip down to rub gently at Ren’s taut neck and shoulders, ran a thumb along his narrow jaw.

Ren took a long, slow breath, exhaled, sucked in another one. “Yeah,” he whispered, opened his eyes slowly, “yeah. I can do it. And it’s gonna be good. I’m gonna build a snowman.” 

\---

Ren and Phasma sat facing each other at the dining table while they sipped their coffee. Ren had lined up his pills in a row again, and he swallowed them all one after another in the same order he always did - the two antidepressants one after another, the nootropic to help with his distractibility and executive dysfunction, and the psi-suppressant last. White, blue, white, and the last one fake candy-apple red. 

Hux retrieved the matte poly box from the countertop and placed it between them, watched as Ren picked nervously at his cuticles, something he did whenever he was anxious or afraid. Left unchecked he would scratch away at himself until he bled. Hux took Ren’s wrist in his right hand, held him firmly but gently until his attention was recalled to the present. 

“You’re starting to do it again, Ren,” Hux murmured, caught his gaze. “I know this is scary.” 

“It isn’t the - thing that scares me,” Ren said, nodding towards the box. “It’s things not working that scares me.” Phasma put her coffee cup down on the table, reached out to take Ren’s right hand in her left. She stroked lightly at the knuckles of his hand, a gesture Hux recognized. She used it to reassure him whenever he was stressed and worried. 

“We won’t know if it won’t work, until it doesn’t work,” Hux said evenly. He let go of Ren’s wrist to pop the locks on the box, pulled its lid up and let it hang off the hinge. The steel collar gleamed faintly from its bed of gray foam padding, and Ren sucked in a slow, shaky breath as Hux lifted it out of the box. 

The clasp was a simple one, the collar’s hinges designed not to pinch Ren’s skin when it opened or closed. It swung open like a handcuff, and Ren closed his eyes as Hux lifted the hair off the nape of his neck, caressed him gently before placing the collar on him. He exhaled softly as the clasp clicked shut, and then opened his eyes. “I don’t think it’s doing anything,” he said with a faint frown, his eyes very bright from anxiety.

“I haven’t turned it on yet,” Hux told him soothingly, “give me your hand.” Ren put his left hand in Hux’s right hand. Fine clone-vat kidskin shielded him from the carbon and metal of Hux’s cold touch. Hux guided Ren’s hand lightly upwards, placed his fingertips across the small switch box built into the front of the collar. “Feel that?” Hux told Ren, as he began to explore the engravings to either side of the switch. “The switch is currently on LIVE, that’s on your right. If you flip it to the left, it’ll be set at DEAD, which’ll insulate your mind like your helmet will. Try it.” 

Ren bit down on his lip and shut his eyes again. A single tear rolled down his cheek as he paused for a breath, another, and then there was an infinitesimal click, a tiny vibration in the air, as he flipped the switch. Hux watched him carefully, saw that Phasma was, too. Ren’s face slackened subtly, the frown melting easily off his forehead as he left out his held breath in a long, slow sigh. “It’s all so - quiet,” Ren said, almost dreamily. Hux rubbed gently at Ren’s shoulder through the thin fabric of his red t-shirt, felt the tension leaving his flesh. “I can hear myself think. I could get used to this.” 

Hux let out a little huff of relief, squeezed gently on Ren’s shoulder. “It’s working as it should, then. And I’m glad it is.” 

“It’s weird, though,” Ren said after a few more moments had passed, closed his eyes again in a slow blink.

 

Phasma frowned briefly at that. “What is?” she asked him.

“I can’t…” Ren shook his head briefly, shrugged as he tried to find the right words for what he was thinking. “I know you’re probably both happy with me. That’s what your faces say. But it’s weird not being able to tell instantly, you know? Makes me want to ask if either of you is mad with me because I just want to make sure you aren’t.”

“I’m not,” Phasma said with a soft smile. The lingering hurt left her gaze for a few moments then. It was amazing, the difference it made in the way she moved and carried herself, as though she were now more herself than she had been since yesterday.

“And neither am I.” Hux leaned down to kiss Ren on the crown of his head, inhaled the scent of his drying hair. A mail notification popped up in the augmented reality of his artificial eyes, but he blinked it away. He could always check it later. 

“You’ll tell me if you’re mad with me, right? Both of you?” Ren asked, studying both their faces for any sign or hint of anger.

“Always,” Hux murmured, and Phasma nodded from her side of the table.

Ren picked up his coffee cup as though weighing it in his hands, put it back down. “I feel so clumsy now. Not with my body, but with my mind. Like - I just can’t read your feelings, and I’m afraid I’ll hurt either of you if I say something wrong.”

“It’s okay, Ren,” Phasma told him, “I’ll tell you if you do something like that, and then we’ll get over it, and we’ll learn more about each other, because that’s what most people do anyway.” She reached across the table again and squeezed Ren’s fingers to reassure him.

“Yeah. I guess I’m not ‘most people,’” Ren said, bitterness bright in his eyes despite the resignation in his face.

“None of us are,” Phasma shrugged easily, “this is a penthouse full of misfits.” She smiled gently at Ren again, finally drew a laugh out of him.

“Maybe that’s why we get along so well,” Hux suggested. It was good to see them both relieved, and he could feel the twinge in the back of his neck easing minutely as he registered the ebbing tension in the space. He knew how to live with Ren as a pair, and Phasma’s inclusion stretched the boundaries, changed the topology of their relationships. It was something natural, something they’d all have to learn from each other, but its newness and fragility had worried him.

“No maybes about it,” Phasma said. She picked up her coffee and drained the cup, put it back down upon the dining table. “I should go downstairs. I just want some time in my own space.” 

“Understood,” Hux said. He watched her rise from her seat, ran his fingers idly along the back of Ren’s head, let his touch whisper through the dark wavy mass of his hair.

“I’m looking forward to dinner tonight,” Ren said, his gaze soft, serious.

“I’ll do my best,” Phasma said with a soft laugh, and then she turned to leave the apartment. The door hissed shut behind her, and then they were alone, in a familiar configuration and context again.

“Do you think you’re up to going out for breakfast, maybe a bit of a walk?” Hux asked Ren, who was lacing his fingers around the warmth of his coffee mug.

“Yeah,” Ren said. He looked up at Hux, took his left hand off the coffee mug and wrapped his arm around Hux’s waist instead, leaning into him. 

Hux luxuriated in that closeness, continued to run his fingers through Ren’s hair in slow, calming passes. “Well, we’re both going to have to put something warmer on if you want to build a snowman.”

\---

Ren had always watched people as though they were birds, his dark eyes alert and bright as he catalogued their clothing, their features, their walks in his capacious memory. He was having to relearn all of that now however, as he gazed down at the lunchtime crowds out on Promenade E in the lowest levels of the arcology. There were too many pedestrians for Ren to study in such detail, and Hux watched his eyes dart back and forth along the flow of human traffic. A paper cup of hot chocolate steamed in Ren’s hand, lip-marks smudged brown along the aperture in its plastic lid. 

“This is cool,” Ren said, grinned briefly at Hux as he looked up from the crowd below, sipped from his hot chocolate. “I’m out here, and I can still hear me.” 

“Good.” Hux let his elbows rest on the railing they stood against, his shoulders relaxed. It was a relief to not have to constantly reassure Ren out in public. They could pretend to be normal people like this, doing normal things until the pretense eroded away to leave only the being. Hux felt a faint stab of guilt at that thought, however. It wasn’t as though Ren had been wilfully difficult. His psionic ability was something he couldn’t help or control adequately, and even this temporary freedom would come at a price, had already cost something, if Hux thought about the collar around Ren’s neck and what it symbolized. It was so easy to ignore it right now, hidden under a warm wool scarf, and Hux pushed his thoughts aside, chose the pretense instead. 

“Where do you want to go from here?” Hux asked Ren, who shifted his cup of hot chocolate to his left hand so he could slip his right arm across Hux’s back. 

“I don’t really know, but I’m up for almost everything as long as it includes you.” Ren smiled softly as he lifted the cup in his hand for emphasis, took another sip from it.

“Mm.” Hux drank from his own paper cup of coffee, sighed softly at the heat of the liquid scorching its way down his gullet to rest reassuring in the pit of his stomach. He checked his enhanced vision, brought up the itinerary he had put up before they had left the penthouse earlier today, while Ren had been busy dressing. _An itinerary._ Hux laughed internally at his pretension - the thing was merely a bulleted list of destinations, each one helpfully crossed out as they moved on. 

Breakfast had been taken care of at a small bakery and café, where they had slices of quiche and cups of hot milky coffee. They had gone from there to one of the parks in Tower B, a small rectangle of greenery squeezed between shops and galleries and rented makerspaces, and from there to a small atelier of glassworkers. Ren had stood outside and watched, fascinated, as one of the artists had blown and shaped a vase out of a single glob of molten silicon dioxide.

From there they had simply wandered through the arcoplex, browsing, people-watching and pausing at cafés or in public areas when Ren had needed to rest. They would have dinner with Phasma at seven which left them potentially five hours more, if they wished to spend it all outside. Not that Hux thought they would be out all day. Ren would want to go home and nap an hour or two from now, just so he would be rested enough to interact with Phasma over dinner.

Several possibilities remained on Hux’s little list, but he shoved them aside while he finished drinking his coffee. “Would you like to go outside, in the snow?” Hux asked Ren. He kept his fingers curled loosely around his empty cup, glancing around for a waste bin as he did so. “You did want to build a snowman.” 

“I’d love to, and yeah, I still do,” Ren said. He turned away from the railing to face Hux, leaned in for a kiss, soft and lingering, that took Hux’s breath away. This was the first time Ren had ever kissed him in public. It wasn’t as though anyone in the arcology would care; they were just two anonymous people among the hundreds of thousands working and living here, but this time Ren felt more like a partner, an equal. The thought brought a sharp excited flutter to Hux’s chest, a little shiver of bittersweet joy as he realized that Ren was only more lovable, more truly himself in his newfound confidence. 

And then Hux thought of the limited nature of Ren’s freedom, and of the gilded cage of their penthouse apartment, thought to Snoke’s easy cruelty, and he shivered despite the warmth of his overcoat and the scarf tucked around his neck. Ren now had something to lose, something Snoke could take from him, and Hux sucked in a slow breath as he tried to hide his alarm at the realization that this poisoned gift only extended Snoke’s grip on Ren’s soul. 

Hux glanced quickly at Ren beneath his eyelashes, tried to see if Ren had picked up on his sudden stab of anxiety, and then he remembered that Ren was now blind to his emotions, and he had not yet learned to read every one of Hux’s expressions. Not especially when Hux was now so skilled at dissembling, so trained and drugged and programmed to perform his duties without a tremor or a blink. His medication pump would kick in any moment now to administer his anxiety medication that would keep his pulse from racing, push him into detachment again so he could watch the world absently from behind his eyes. 

No, Hux thought with a strange kind of fury, no, I will not be detached this time. He ignored the message from his medication pump as it activated, leaned into Ren for another soft kiss. “Let’s go out and enjoy the snow,” he said, and meant it. 

\---

“Hi,” Phasma said brightly as she received them at her front door, hours later. “How was breakfast?” 

“I’m sorry,” Ren said with a lopsided grin, “I can’t even remember breakfast now that I can smell what you’re cooking.” He held a fine cardboard box in his hands, the surface embossed and gilded with the name of a bakery in Promenade A. 

“Those truffles smell so good, don’t they?” Phasma said as she stepped aside to let Ren deposit his box on the empty dining table. “I kept huffing the jar on and off today, before I started making the risotto.” 

Hux closed his eyes for a moment, inhaled deeply. There was a faint savory note, and then a fragrance that reminded him of rain and earth, hints of garlic, a deep, abiding musk. It was a odor that spoke to his deepest memories, of his mother shaving paper-thin slices of truffles onto plates of food that neither of them could afford to eat. It reminded him of the times he would stay up so she could read to him after she came back late from work, and he would inhale the mingled smells of the food lingering in her white chef’s jacket that had so perfumed her as she cooked. 

“My mum used to tell me that if I kept sniffing at something delicious I could accidentally suck up all the goodness in it, and leave it tasteless, gray and translucent,” Hux said as he opened his eyes. “It was only a joke, but then smells are free.”

“They’re free only until I figure out how to monetize it, but I would never charge either of you,” Phasma said, grinned. The door hissed shut behind Hux as he stepped past her to deposit the contents of his shopping bag in her clean, orderly fridge. The two bottles of elderflower lemonade went in the fridge door, where they would chill until they were needed. 

“Should I put our dessert in the fridge, too?” Ren asked. He moved to pick the box back up from the dining table, looked to Phasma for direction.

“Not until you tell me what it is, and maybe let me have a taste,” she said with an appreciative glance at the box and a wicked look in her eye. 

“There’s time for that later, Phas,” Hux said. He was genuinely amused by the play in her expression, relieved as well at the levity. The time alone had done her some good, as had the cooking. 

Phasma shook her head briefly. “Nuh-uh,” she grinned, “You want to access the fridge, you pay the toll.” 

“I’ve already put the drinks in there,” Hux protested softly with mock indignance, “Would you like me to open one of them and pour you some lemonade?” 

“No,” she said, her expression softening a touch, “I’m not serious about the toll thing. But I’d really like to know what it is.” 

Ren stepped around the bar counter to stand in the kitchen area properly. He opened the lid of the box solemnly and quietly, showed its contents to her. The smells of coffee and chocolate and Kahlua wafted out of the box to compete with the savory truffles and veal. “Mm, tiramisu,” Phasma said. She leaned in for a long whiff of the dessert’s bittersweet fragrance, looked up from it when Ren stuck a finger slowly, deliberately into a corner of the confection. 

“The toll,” Ren said seriously as he held the dollop of custard out to her for a taste. Phasma closed her eyes and took Ren’s finger into her mouth, sucked and licked it clean with an appreciative purr. She let her lips linger softly on his skin for a brief moment before she blinked and turned away to the stove, where something was bubbling. The moment burst, evaporated, but a strange heat bloomed on Hux’s skin, under his collar and down his back. 

“Risotto’s ready,” Phasma said abruptly as she turned the burner off, took the pot up and laid it on a trivet, and then Ren was handing the tiramisu to Hux so he could put it in the fridge, and got out of Phasma’s way while she worked. 

Hux stepped around her easily. “Behind you,” he said in gentle warning as he passed her to join Ren at the dining table. 

“I should have saved a little of that custard filling for you,” Ren laughed softly as Hux shed his coat and scarf, sat down beside him, “I know what a fiend you are for dessert.” They shared a little laugh over that, and then the time for laughing was over when Phasma opened the oven and took out a covered cast-iron pot in mittened hands. A small cloud of steam rolled out as she lifted the lid, freighted with the fragrance of white truffles and milk-fed veal. The mist rose, dispersed, carrying the smell with it, of butter and Marsala wine, the subtle, odiferous kiss of garlic, bold, salty pancetta, the sweetness of carrots and onions and more.

“My God,” Ren moaned softly as the aroma spread through Phasma’s apartment, “I’m so hungry.” 

“So am I,” Hux said helplessly, “Phasma, are you sure that’s not divine ambrosia you’re feeding us?”

“Not unless either one of you went and heisted the palaces of the gods on Mount Olympus. Those are the truffles you brought me. And a few other things,” Phasma laughed softly as she dished out shallow bowls of risotto, topped each with a braised veal shank. 

“Some folks think that the Biblical manna refers to truffles,” Ren said as Phasma laid his plate before him, handed him silverware, “so maybe you’re feeding us manna from heaven instead.” He poked experimentally at his veal shank and watched the meat fall lusciously off the bone, favored her with a grin.

“Well, truffles on their own aren’t that filling.” Phasma passed Hux his own plate before she got her own, and then poured drinks. There was a soft hiss and a gurgle as she emptied a bottle of lemonade into chilled glasses that she took out of the fridge. “You’d get sick of them if you had nothing but truffles to eat.”

“Yeah,” Ren nodded in agreement, “Which is why the exiled Israelites asked for quail, and got it. But then God got pissed-off and they died after eating the meat. In reality it was probably coturnism, which you get from quail that eat poisonous plants while they migrate.”

“You’re just a storehouse of trivial, Ren.” Phasma pulled her own chair out and sat easily, motioned with her fork at both Hux and Ren. “You can start eating now. I don’t expect anyone to have to say a grace or write a poem before we start.” 

“I didn’t really have that much to do with my life besides read, until today,” Ren said, and then he fell silent as he ate a first experimental bite of braised veal, his eyelids fluttering with bliss as the complex flavors registered upon his palate and his tongue. 

Phasma watched Ren close his eyes, shot a mischievous look over at Hux, who was stirring the sauce from the veal shank into his steaming plate of risotto, “I forgot to ask. How did the snowman go?”

“He didn’t,” Ren said, before Hux could reply. “The snow was too dry and didn’t stick together. I didn’t even manage to throw a snowball at Hux, it just fell apart in my hand, and with the limiter on it wasn’t like I could just make it hold together in mid-air.” It was just as well that Ren had spoken then, it gave Hux a moment to fork up some tender veal and nibble gently at the mouthful, sigh at the unctuous richness of the meat. Shanks contained a lot of connective tissue, and that collagen broke down to a rich, silky gelatin under slow, moist heat. 

“Mm,” Phasma moaned aloud over a bite of veal, grinned after she swallowed her own morsel. “That’s a shame. I hope this dinner makes up for the disappointment.”

“We’ll have more than a few snow days before winter is out,” Hux said, glanced conspiratorially at Ren, “I’m sure you’ll be able to pelt me with snowballs all you want later, after this stuff melts and slushes a bit more. It’ll stick better then.”

“I think I’ve outdone myself,” Phasma sighed as she ate another forkful of veal, followed it with some creamy risotto. “Thank you, the both of you, so much for those truffles. I really enjoyed cooking with them.” 

“I’m going to have to get you rare ingredients every time we go somewhere, now,” Ren told Phasma with a beatific smile upon his face, “because I want to know what else you’ll do with those.” 

“Shall I write a list for you?” Phasma said. She picked a chanterelle slice from her risotto and ate it whole, off the tines of her fork. “I have a lot of bucket list ingredients.” 

“Such as?” Hux asked, genuinely curious, “Caviar? Larks’ tongues?” 

“Well, sturgeon caviar’s not on the list if only because you don’t cook with it, you really only eat it. But I’ve read Brillat-Savarin’s _Physiologie_ and he describes an _omelette au thon_ that uses both the fish and the roe. It sounds just exquisite.” 

“A tuna-fish omelet?” Hux asked for Ren’s benefit, so that he would understand the context.

“Yes,” Phasma nodded, “and the small Atlantic tunny-fish, not the large bluefin tuna which you can only get in vat-grown sheets, nowadays. Some English translations say salmon works just as well, but you know salmon roe has to come from whole salmon, not vat-grown.” 

“So noted,” Hux said. He opened a memorandum file in his enhanced vision, put salmon roe at its very top. “Any specific kind of salmon roe?” 

Phasma frowned slightly for a moment, her eyes closing as she thought. “Something slightly better than the average stuff you get in little jars. Those have been salted too long, and the texture suffers. I was thinking smoked Northwestern salmon roe would be nice, but it’s not like I get enough leave time to make a trip out.”

“I should have gotten some when we went out to Seatac last year,” Ren murmured in between bites of his dinner. The contents of his plate were vanishing rapidly, and the sight of it made Hux smile softly. Today’s excursion had left Ren hungrier than usual, and the walking did them both good. Perhaps it was possible to put some flesh on Ren’s bony frame, as long as they kept doing this.

“We might go again,” Hux shrugged, ate another mouthful of luscious veal shank. A rich plug of marrow remained in the bone, and he slid it out with the point of his knife, let it puddle extravagantly on top of his risotto. 

“Cloudberries,” Phasma said abruptly after she devoured another slice of mushroom, “I’ve always wanted to try them. Maybe some cold-smoked reindeer, too, if you two ever get sent out to the Nordics all hush-hush. They don’t like corporate interference overmuch and the closest I’ve ever been was St. Petersburg, plus I didn’t have time to get anything from the duty-free.” 

“I’ve had caribou,” Hux mused aloud, “which is just American reindeer. It’s good. A little gamy, really lean. It wasn’t smoked or cured, though, just served with a juniper berry sauce. It reminded me oddly of gin.”

“Where, Vancouver?” Phasma had somehow cleaned her plate before Hux had, the hollow shank bone the only reminder of its contents. She leaned contentedly back in her chair and played with her half-drunk glass of lemonade, swirling the icecubes in an endless tiny maelstrom.

“Yeah,” Ren grinned, his laden fork hanging temporarily in mid-air, “and Hux dragged me out for dim sum the next day before we had to fly back here. We had those amazing tiny pork buns and those crispy taro balls that were deep fried and stuffed with mushrooms and minced pork, I think?” 

“I didn’t think this was possible after a dinner of truffled veal, but I might be feeling hungry again,” Phasma said with a pealing laugh, her dark blue eyes alight with amusement. “Ren, you lovely bastard.” 

“And they bring you everything on tiny little plates,” Ren continued mischievously, “so you’re supposed to share. I ate so much I got sick on the flight back. Totally worth it, though.”

\---

The penthouse was warm and cosy as the snow began to fall again outside, faint white flakes blowing past the tinted windows into the dark of night as Hux sat on his side of the bed with Ren’s head in his lap. He was full of good food and his skin buzzed with a strange sense of abandon. It had been so easy to forget his situation at dinner with Phasma, and it was nice to just sit here and run his fingers through Ren’s wavy hair, watching the dim light bounce off the strands disturbed by the passage of his hand. 

Ren’s eyes were closing drowsily in the half-light as he lay in a half-curl on top of the sheets, his long legs sprawled across the mattress in a pose of utter relaxation. His limiter collar glinted faintly above the collar of his red t-shirt, but it was so easy to ignore right now. Better, Hux thought, to appreciate this time, no sense in borrowing trouble from tomorrow. 

“Today was a success, wasn’t it?” Hux asked Ren softly as Ren’s clever fingers began to stroke idly at the nap on Hux’s trousers. 

“Yes, yes it was,” Ren said as he glanced contentedly back up at Hux, grinned briefly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this un-worried. Not worried. You know.” 

“Yes,” Hux said. He lifted his hand from Ren’s head, gently caressed the bumps of his spine, let the silicone pads of his fingers linger along the slope of Ren’s trapezius muscles, found them remarkably relaxed and supple. “I can tell.” 

“You can always tell with me, though,” Ren said. He shifted his head a little as Hux began to rub soothingly at his back - there was no real reason for it presently, but it was nice to do even when Ren wasn’t having an anxiety attack. 

“I think that’s only fair,” Hux laughed softly, “seeing how you know what I’m thinking about before I even finish thinking it.” 

“Not when I have this on,” Ren murmured. He raised his head and propped himself on an elbow, and then reached up to the hollow of his throat to turn the limiter to LIVE. There was that dry click again as the switch flipped, and then Ren pushed himself all the way off the bed to sit up, scooted closer to Hux. “Mm,” he murmured softly, closing his eyes as he began to taste the ghosts of Hux’s emotions, “You’re really chill too. I don’t think I’ve ever felt you this calm, at least not when opiates weren’t involved.” 

“Unfortunate that morphine is so habit-forming,” Hux murmured. He closed his eyes as Ren leaned close to him, pressed his brow against Hux’s. “I do need to stay functional.” 

“For the both of us,” Ren whispered, and then they were kissing slowly and tenderly, all touch and breath and taste. Ren’s tongue was velvety in his mouth, his spit still tinged with the bittersweetness of kahlua and dark chocolate. They parted briefly and then kissed again, lightly, briefly, and again, just a series of moth-wing touches on Hux’s lips as Ren reached up to caress the side of his face, run the tip of his thumb against the implant bracketing his right orbit. “I’ve missed this all day,” Ren pulled away to look Hux in the face, slightly cross-eyed this close. 

“You’ve missed what?” Hux asked him, planted a light kiss on the tip of his nose. 

That kiss provoked a brief laugh from Ren - it always did, although Hux did not know entirely why. “Your feelings,” Ren said after he stopped chuckling, “I like knowing you’re happy. It makes me feel good, too.” 

“I’m going to have to take your collar off soon, so you don’t chafe,” Hux told Ren, as he reached up to caress his narrow jawline, let his fingers slip downward towards the steel of the limiter collar, over it, and then onto the soft cotton of Ren’s t-shirt, his collarbones clothed so thinly in flesh beneath.

“Sure,” Ren said, tipping his chin easily up, the great blood vessels in his neck exposed and vulnerable under Hux’s fingertips. The amount of trust Ren placed in him always provoked a pang of heartache. Ren trusted him because he didn’t have anyone else to trust. The only thing Hux could do about it was try to be worthy of that trust despite his responsibilities as Ren’s handler and jailer, and it stung. 

Hux forced the guilt aside before it could darken his mood, knowing that Ren would sense that, too. “Hold still,” he said as he lifted his free hand, tucked it under Ren’s hair at the nape of his neck, “I want to make sure your hair isn’t caught in the hinge.” The back of Ren’s neck was warm to the touch, faintly damp, insulated by his hair, and Hux found his way to the hinge of the collar by touch, swept his finger around it to ensure that it was clear. 

“That would suck,” Ren agreed, and then there was another soft clicking as the clasp came free, and Hux lifted the collar from around his neck. 

“There you go,” Hux said. He let the collar rest on top of the bed between them, and it looked so faint and innocuous reflecting the pattern of the comforter it laid on, half-hidden in the shadows cast by their bodies. 

“Mm.” Ren lay back down on Hux’s bed, content to lounge for the moment. He straightened his scarecrow legs, let his ankles hang off the edge of the mattress as he reached out for the limiter collar, held it in the air over his head like an incomplete halo. “You know, I was wondering, a bit, why this is a collar,” Ren said. He turned the device around in his hands, put it back down on the bed. “I think I have an idea.” 

“Oh?” Hux braced himself a little in case Ren talked himself into a depressive bout. Hux was not always successful at insulating Ren from the manipulation and calculation in every aspect of his life. He was simply too open, too clever and too perceptive, and his ignorance was a chosen thing. A wilful self-omission, so he could keep going in the absence of hope.

“Yeah, there’s all the uh, kinky connotations,” Ren said as he shifted on the mattress, leaned his head back on Hux’s thigh, “but you can get that with a wristband or anklet anyway.”

Hux huffed a little, amused by Ren’s turn of phrase. “Kinky connotations. Have you found some way to get past the network filters?”

“No.” Ren smiled softly and let his eyes close as Hux began to caress his hair again. “You’re just not very diligent at screening the books you bring me. No. I mean, I go into dangerous situations, right? With you. Most of the time I have to find cover and wait until you’re done, but I could see things getting hairy. And if they did, and if this was on my wrist, and someone managed to take off my arm, then not only would I be in severe pain, I’d also have the world’s thoughts pressing down on me from everywhere. That, that would suck.” 

That was a good point, Hux thought, one that he had not considered. “Whereas you’re not going to care as much if you’re decapitated,” he said, letting his fingers linger around Ren’s skull. His clean scalp was warm, his unruly hair waving out over the fulled wool of Hux’s trouser leg.

Ren grinned briefly, bleakly despite the contentment in his eyes. “Exactly. Or exactimundo. Something.” 

Hux shifted briefly, began to trace the lines of Ren’s chin. Stubble scraped softly against his hands, the metal making the faintest _hish_ against the hairs, a vibration more felt than heard. “You’re too clever for your own good, Ren. But if it makes you happy.” 

“It’s better for you that I’m clever, else you’d be bored out of your skull,” Ren said, just the tiniest bit smug, “I try to make sure I’m a good conversationalist, you know.” 

Hux laughed despite himself. “I know,” he said softly as he began to rub gently at Ren’s broad shoulders through the thin fabric of his red t-shirt. “I’m sometimes amazed that you give this much of a shite about me even with what I do.” 

Ren shifted, looked up, his gaze sharp and serious. “Was my fault you’re here in the first place.” _Fuck,_ Hux thought, there it was. The pain bloomed full blown in his chest not only for Ren’s guilt, but also because Hux occasionally wondered what life would be like if he hadn’t taken the FOE job, if he had never met Ren in the first place. 

Guilt and resentment mingled uneasily in Hux’s belly, immiscible as he reached up for the knot of his necktie and began to loosen it. “No it wasn’t,” he said as he tugged the silk free with a faint rasp.

Ren moved, rolled over on his back so Hux could finish undressing.“Yeah, it was,” he said thoughtfully, his face pensive, “I found you for Snoke. You were the right one.” 

Hux stood up and unbuttoned his shirt placket-first, then worked at the gauntlet buttons and his cufflinks. “That was done under duress, Ren, it’s not like you could have said no.” 

“Mm,” Ren said, smiled bittersweetly, “Yeah, at least I can with you. It wasn’t always like this.” He levered himself up on an elbow and shook his head briefly as though banishing memories. 

“I’m sorry, Ren,” Hux whispered, seeing the hesitation, the profound trauma lurking in Ren’s gaze, the things he had never been able to talk about, not even to Hux. He alluded to the events occasionally, and Hux was always torn between rage and frustration at the fact that he had never been allowed to access those parts of Kylo Ren’s past. He’d been able to access the personnel records, heavily redacted as they were. The documents only mentioned ongoing “misconduct” that ended in an “incident” a decade ago, with no further explanation or detail.

Ren looked at Hux, his eyes suddenly very bright as he read the guilt, the frustration, the resentment, and he made himself smile his childlike smile. “Don’t be,” he said, and Hux knew he meant it. He shrugged off his t-shirt and stood to unbutton his jeans, stepped carefully out of them. “Could I sleep here with you tonight?”

“Always,” Hux murmured. He hung his clothing and Ren’s up in the cleaning cabinet, dimmed the lights before he too climbed into bed. Ren lay with his back to him, and he tucked himself close to Ren, the thud of his heart against Ren’s spine like a drumbeat. Ren leaned back into him, and then tugged the comforter higher, over his own shoulder.

 _I need to talk to Phas and see if she can access those files,_ Hux thought as he held Ren close to his chest, like a living talisman, as though it were Ren’s responsibility to ward off his nightmares. _I need to know what they did to him before I took over._ He buried his face in Ren’s fragrant hair, kissed him softly on the back of his head. 

“Mm,” Ren hummed contentedly, but there was tension in his shoulders now, a stiffness to his back that Hux knew well, and a faint tremor that meant that Ren had started to weep silently into his pillow. 

“It’s okay,” Hux whispered to Ren as gently as he could. “It’s okay. You can always tell me no. You can always tell me to stop. And if someone else won’t listen, I’ll take them apart nerve by nerve.” 

“Promise?” Ren said, his voice strangled, hissing with tears. The tremor became a shiver, and the shivers became a sob that slid easily between Hux’s ribs to pierce him to the heart.

Hux held Ren more tightly, kissed him again. “I promise,” Hux murmured into his hair as Ren reached down for Hux’s hand, closed his fingers around the metal and carbon of his wrist. “Go to sleep, love. I’ll be here beside you, I’ll keep you safe.”

“Okay,” Ren said. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and then did it again as he tried to calm himself down.

“Shh.” The tension in Ren’s muscles eased faintly as Hux began to whisper soothing nonsense into his ears, and he eventually relaxed. The rise of his chest was slow, regular, and the tremors bled out of him as he began to drowse, slipping easily into sleep.

Hux made himself stay awake for a little bit longer, in case Ren woke and needed him. He kept himself busy by organizing his files using his enhanced vision, his eyes projecting a user interface over his retinas. A reminder blinked up informing him that he had not checked his inbox all day, that there was mail still waiting for him. He called the message up, glanced at its contents and stiffened as though he had been shot.

“Something’s wrong,” Ren whispered, shaking himself awake as he rolled over to look Hux in the face. “What’s wrong? Hux?” 

Hux remained on his side. He could only gaze at that exquisite face overlaid with words, a simple sentence, not long but terrible all the same.

 _Kylo Ren begins combat training tomorrow,_ the message said. It was signed _Snoke._

Hux made himself focus on Ren's face, took a deep breath. _Fuck. What am I going to do now?_ He could find no answer in his racing thoughts. 


End file.
